


i'll tell you my sins (and you can sharpen your knife)

by winterbones



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Series, Spoilers, not sure what happened, this was supposed to be just pwp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-10-10
Packaged: 2018-02-20 01:47:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 30,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2410514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterbones/pseuds/winterbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I think I should write a book. How Minako Got Her Groove Back."</p><p>the shitennou return to life, specifically the senshi's, and minako deals with it (poorly)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. my church offers no absolution

Minako’s twenty-fifth birthday was spent freezing her ass off an apartment roof, rubbing her hands together and wishing her fuku came with leggings for the winter months. She was wearing a pair—her _favorite_ pair, actually, with cute little rhinestones up the sides—but had forgone a thermos and gloves because that had felt dancing a little too close to stalker territory than she wanted.

This was just surveillance. Professional, totally not creepy at all surveillance. Usagi and Mamoru might be in the bygones-be-bygones camp but they didn’t know what it was like to have a sword plunged in their chest by the man they had previously been shimmying out of their panties for.

Petticoats. Whatever. She was a fashion expert on the now, not a fashion experts on days of Silver Millennium past.

_“You have a serious problem,” Makoto had accused her, but was resigned to the fact that Minako was going to do as Minako pleased._

_“It’s called vigilance. Usagi and Mamoru are supposed to be benevolent and forgiving and blah blah blah. They’re going to be king and queen one day. You and me? We’re soldiers. Frontline, in-the-trenches, storming the beaches of Normandy soldiers. Which means I’m not trusting the sons of bitches that killed us just one reincarnation ago.”_

_Makoto rolled her eyes but let Minako lick the batter off her whisk any. Makoto was a solid friend like that. As she stretched to reach for her cookie sheet her shirt rode upward. There was a line of reddish bruising trailing up from her jeans and passed the lifting hemline of her shirt._

_It might have been a while, but a bitch knew a hickey when she saw one._

_“Dissention in the ranks,” Minako moaned. “Loyalty traded in for long, sexy hair and muscular thighs. For shame.”_

_Makoto went beat red—she was so adorable—and shoved her shirt back down. “Usagi and Mamoru gave them all the clear. That’s good enough in my book.”_

_Makoto didn’t have crystal clear memories of that day in battle, but Minako didn’t hold it against her. She also didn’t hope she would ever remember. Some things were just better left buried._

_But some of them did have those clear-cut memories. Some of them knew what the cost had been on that day. Some of them_ couldn’t _forgive and forget. Anything._

_Makoto rolled her dough into neat little circles. Minako managed a whole five minutes, which was a new record for her._

_“So—just how muscular_ are _those thighs? Can he bench press you with them?” Makoto all but dropped her trey of cookies, only managing to save it with her superhuman reflexes. “So he can. Just how kinky does it get? Am I going to find a 50 Shades room behind door number three?”_

_“Minako!”_

_“Do you have a safe word?”_

_“Go stalk your boyfriend!”_

_“He is not my boyfriend! He is a potential-ally-but-mostly-enemy and one I will dust given half a chance.” She hopped off the stool, throwing out her tumble of golden hair. “Fine. Fine. I’m going. I can tell when I’m not wanted. I’ll be back later for cookies?”_

_“No, you won’t,” Makoto called over her shoulder. “I’m being bench pressed tonight.”_

_Minako tripped at the door, all but laughing. Good one, Makoto! But never one to allow herself to be outdone, she called over her shoulder, “Use a condom!” and slammed it before Makoto could retort._

And Makoto was getting laid and Minako was freezing her—admittedly very nice—ass off.

“Dream of sandy, white beaches and hot, hot sun—and lifeguards. Beautiful, tanned lifeguards that want to rub lotion all over my bikini-clad bottom,” she muttered. It didn’t help.

Plus her target—it made it seem less creepy and stalkerish if she depersonalized him and called him target; she had thought about calling Operation: Making Sure that Asshole Isn’t Still Evil but it had too long—had been out all day. Just what was he doing? She wasn’t going to drag her ass all over the city looking for him.

The least he could do was actually come home on the nights she planned to spy. What a jerk.

She texted Usagi—who was on a date with Mamo-chan—and Ami—who was elbow deep in viscera—and Rei, the only one other than herself who was firmly in the They Tried to Kill Us Once And Are Not To Be Trusted camp. But instead of being worried about it? Rei had gone the haughty route.

_“They’re not worth our time,” she informed Minako. “If they do end up being evil we’ll toast them as easily as we did last time.”_

_No need to point out to Rei that it hadn’t been easy, Minako had thought. Nothing had been easy and the cost of a single mistake was impossibly high. Minako knew all too well._

But Rei did that haughty, holier-than-thou attitude so well. Minako had never quite mastered it. When her grandpa had hired Possibly-Reformed-But-Still-an-Asshole Jadeite at the temple, Rei had simply kicked up her nose and pretended she wasn’t there.

Of course, Minako didn’t even have a chance to not give a damn at her work place. She was a glorified errand girl at a trashy fashion magazine, and Kunzite wouldn’t know minimum wage if it came up and grabbed him on the ass.

“The least they could have done was adjust poorly to the new world.” But no. Five years post-reincarnation Kunzite, going to university with Mamoru in the United States, had turned into some kind of high-risk broker from Wall Street, with money practically falling into his lap.

If there was anything she had more than an evil jerk it was a _rich_ evil jerk.

A light flickered on in the foyer of Kunzite’s studio loft—how pretentious!—and Minako dragged her binoculars to her face. She was going to pretend she hadn’t been salivating over his art deco—and in stepped Kunzite, shaking snow out of his long, silvery hair. He hadn’t cut it and she thought that made him a bit of a tool—she wasn’t going to say so to Makoto, because she got touchy about Minako insinuating that the guy she was dropping trou with might be the evilest asshole to ever evil—and she wasn’t going to think that it made him hot.

His persona of being as serious as a heart attack coupled with waist-length hair? A bad-boy edge to that ingrained somberness? That was _not_ hot. Definitely not.

The first time she had seen that hair she had thought of moonlight, silvery and thick. She had wondered—but never asked, because even then she had been aware of how high the tensions between the Moon Kingdom and Earth were—if there wasn’t some Lunar blood in him. The idea had amused Venus, but it made Minako scowl.

The supposedly-reformed-but-possibly-still-evil jerkwad didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as Usagi! She had no idea what Mamoru had been thinking, first keeping their stone-trapped souls—which was totally weird, by the way—in his desk drawer and then letting them back into his good graces when some quirk of that fickle bitch fate restored their bodies.

 _Okay._ Technically, the bodies were new. This counted as Endymion’s generals’ third incarnation, and how selfish was that? Leave some reincarnations for the rest of them!

And where had he been all night? Out with a supermodel—she’d seen a tabloid photo of him and some French-speaking, seven-nine Amazon goddess, not that she had been looking! Not that she cared!—because women swooned all over his mysterious, brooding air? Ugh. If only they knew.

“Do something evil,” she muttered. “I double dog dare you.”

She could almost hear Artemis’s warning voice at the back of her head, telling her not to stick her head in a crocodile’s mouth—or was it a lion’s? Damn she couldn’t remember—and telling her to keep as far away as possible from Kunzite. Artemis had been almost as displeased as Minako about the Shitennou’s return. He’d even postponed his and Luna’s _“monitoring seismic activities of the world in event of the ice-age that’ll lead to Crystal Tokyo”_ trip around the world—or, as Minako liked to call it, “Artemis and Luna can turn human whenever they want so now they’re gonna bang like rabbits” honeymoon—until Minako had put her foot down, on his tail, and insisted he go.

She loved Artemis but he was a little much sometimes, especially when he was acting protective. She could handle Kunzite, if he was still evil—and he probably was—and she didn’t need Artemis acting as surrogate brother-slash-father to her.

Besides, with Artemis out of town, Minako was free to do whatever she want. Such as spy—er—clinically observe former evil baddies.

Her phone vibrated against her thigh. Not evil. Unless it was her credit card company. God, she hoped it wasn’t her credit card company.

The number was unfamiliar on her screen, and she scowled down at it and then glanced back up. Was Kunzite on his phone across the way? Oh, he totally was.

“Don’t you think you’re taking this a little too far?” was the first, and only thing, Kunzite said. He sounded extremely put out, like she was more exhausting than a threat. Like she wasn’t the famed leader of the Senshi, one of the strongest women on earth.

Like she hadn’t killed him _twice_.

“There’s no such thing as too far when it comes to defending one’s self from the mechanizations of evil,” she muttered into the receiver, scowling as he began tugging off articles of clothing. Oh, he was vile—and his abs were drool-worthy. “Ha! If you think seeing a guy his birthday suit is going to scare me off think again, buddy! I’ve seen tons of guys in the flesh. One isn’t all that different from the other.”

Minako had entered sexual maturity with impressive gusto, if she did say so herself. Usagi could be one-guy-for-the-rest-of-my-life all she wanted. Minako was going to the buffet. Except, of course, Kunzite been the only guy whose ribs she’d run her tongue over.

_Okay. Filing that right into ‘never to be thought about. Ever.’ Not his abs. Not licking. Especially not licking. ___

Of course she went on thinking about. There was nothing wrong with that, she comforted herself. Just because he was evil didn’t negate his overall hotness, and Kunzite had been beaten with the you’re-so-handsome-I’m-clawing-at-my-own-face stick early and often in life.

Broad shouldered, all that long silvery hair. Every inch of him was pure expense, pure I’ve-never-in-my-life-wore-something-as-bourgeoisie-as-denim. What an ass. What an ass she’d like to give a hearty squeeze to. _Stop it, Minako! Bad thoughts._

“Yes,” Kunzite said, growly voice disrupting her dangerous ship of thoughts— _ugh. Train of thoughts! Damnit._ His voice was growly but not like sexy growly—velvet over sandpaper etcetera etcetera. More like he had swallowed a bowl of razors-cereal and acid milk. “I’m well aware.”

“Are you feeling sick?” she asked before she could stop herself. Because it wasn’t like she cared. If he caught pneumonia and died it would make her life easier, wouldn’t it?

“I’m feeling fine.” Kunzite bit the words off. There was a command in his tone, very I’m the Boss Listen to Me. Minako had never taken well to being told what to do. She usually nodded, and then did the exact opposite. Usagi always said it was good that Venus was the leader, otherwise she’d just go off and do whatever she wanted anyway.

_Well, yeah. But only because I know what I’m doing and no one else does._

“Then take some throat-lozenges or something,” she suggested. “You sound like you’ve swallowed a baby.”

“Of my many sins, that is not one of them.”

“Thank goodness for small favors.”

And wait, how had this conversation turned almost—dare she say it?—civil? He was her archenemies! Recently reformed, but only after multiple attempts on Minako and her princess’s life. Call her unforgiving.

“How’d you get this number?” she demanded. Then, before he could say anything, snapped. “Never mind. _Usagi_.”

Goddess love her princess, but Usagi was all about the making nice and putting the past in the past. Minako supposed she had to be, since her boyfriend-slash-fiancé-slash-husband-slash-king had a habit of winding up brainwashed, and those forgiving streaks had earned her enough admirers over the years, but a general couldn’t really afford to be so nice.

No, she had to be a stone-cold bitch. Hard-nosed, mean, stern—and look fabulous in a skirt while doing so. Otherwise—

Minako lips pressed together. Well, she knew what happened when she wasn’t.

_“They’re Mamoru’s best friends,” Usagi had said. “He needs them, just like I need you.”_

_“No one needs friends who can list ‘worked for an evil empire’ on their resumes,” she pointed out. Then frowned. “What’s wrong with us?”_

_“We’re—you’re—girls, you know?”_

_Minako blinked. “What’s your point?”_

_Usagi had laughed, stretching out her legs and letting her still-wet toe nails dangle over the side of the couch. “I don’t get it. It’s a guy thing. He needs to guy time.”_

_“Mamoru has us! He doesn’t need more friends.” Minako had flipped a pillow over her head, muffling her groan. “He wants to talk about gas fumes and—ugh—jet pilots or whatever? I can totally talk about all those. Or Makoto can.”_

_“I think it’s just different.” Usagi’s long hair, out of its trademark buns, brushed across Minako’s thighs. “Besides, they love him. They would die for him.”_

_“That’s a change, since they were trying to kill him only a handful of years ago.”_

_“Minako.”_

_“I’m just saying!” Minako turned head towards the back of the couch, counting out the compressions in it, the proof of years of use. “It’s not so easy for me, Usagi. You weren’t there.”_

_“Minako.” Usagi’s hand touched Minako’s knees, soft and soothing. “You remember it all, don’t you? I suspected but I never—”_

_“Whoa! Would you look at my wrist! I’m going to be late for a thing!” Minako bounded to her feet with a graceful roll-leap. “Gotta go!”_

“You do realize,” Kunzite drawled, tugging at the drawer string of his sweats, “that it’s twenty degrees out and you’re in a mini-skirt?”

Her first reaction was to snap _it’s a hell of a lot colder than twenty degrees, idiot_ before she figured he was probably using weird American temperatures. Most of the last five years of his life had been spent in America.

“My warrior instincts keep me from feeling the cold. And I have tights on, thank you very much,” she lied. She was wearing tights, but her butt was so numb she couldn’t feel anything anymore. The tights were really doing nothing for her except look cute.

“It’s seventy-five degrees in the loft,” Kunzite said. She watched him pass by his thermostat to make sure. “You could just come up.”

“I’d sooner kiss a Wookie,” Minako said, taking a perverse pleasure that he wouldn’t get it. Mamoru had mentioned that his generals weren’t on the up and up with pop culture references. Mamoru was currently navigating them through Lord of the Rings, because Mamoru was a fucking nerd. “And get to the gym, Kunzite. You’ve got some old-man flab.”

He didn’t. He looked like he could bench-press a train, but you know what? Fuck him.

Minako cut the call before he could think of a comeback.

 

 

 

 

_Minako dreamt of the smoke and smell of blood, caked in with the wet earth. She almost choked on it._

_Mars stands at her side, immovable, indomitable, the merciless Lady of the Blistering Flames. Whatever hurt might have rattled around her heart it’s banked by years of training, and a festering sense of rage and betrayal._

_Good, Venus thinks. Good. Hold it fast. Hold it tight. This is a lost cause, and they had both known it from the minute they had stepped onto this field. They would die on this dusty, Lunarian battlefield. Perhaps, in some small way, they feel like they both deserve it. Could there have been some way to prevent this? Stop this? Had they not been vigilant enough? Strong enough?_

_“There’s a cliff-face to the left,” Venus observes. The magic-imbued metal of her chain is warm where it dangles against her exposed thighs. “I want you to climb up and when I give the single, bring down the heat.”_

_“Are you insane?” Mars speaks it out of the corner of her mouth. “Face them alone? You’ll be absolutely slaughtered! You’ll—”_

_“Have some faith!” The smile that touches Venus’s lips is self-effacing. “I won’t go down until I take them all down. And this was a losing battle from the start.”_

_The silence from Mars is mutinous and stubborn, so like the battle-goddess. Venus wants to put her arms around her, hold her tight. It’s not your fault, she wants to say. None of this is your fault. They call you a goddess, but you’re just a woman—just like me. If there’s blame to lay at anyone’s feet, it’s at Venus’s._

_But she doesn’t. The time for comforts has passed._

_“When the battle turns, when you know it’s lost, I want you to run. Tell Queen Serenity. Perhaps she’ll find a way to get the princess to safety.” Bury their beloved princess in some dark, black reach of the galaxy? The idea was sickening—lovely Serenity had groan up in the crystalline structures of the warm Moon. But what choice did they have?_

_Perhaps they’d send the prince with her. For all their apprehension about him, Endymion would die for her. Venus believes that._

_“Goddess-damn you, Venus,” Mars says, and there is water in her voice._

_“I don’t need the Goddess for that.”_

 

 

 

Usagi and Minako met up for milkshakes every Wednesday on the dot—the dot being the time around the 3 o’clock mark since neither of them ever showed up on time. Minako was busy, with her lackluster job, and so was Usagi. She’d someone managed to get herself into a college program—shocking—and had decided, without telling anyone, she was majoring in international politics—so shocking it was electrocuting. But she was apparently doing well. Usagi had taped a collage of A’s and B’s to Mamoru’s fridge like a general would their war prizes.

Minako was proud. Not prouder than, say, Mamoru, but Mamoru had always known exactly what Usagi was capable of while Minako—okay Minako had to admit she had had her doubts, in the beginning. It hadn’t dulled her honed edge of loyalty, but she had wondered if the princess she had died to protect really was in this little slip of a crybaby.

She was.

“Not sleeping well?” Usagi asked, more munching than slurping her milkshake—her caramel chocolate brownie had hunks of peanut butter cups in them, as Minako understood it.

Minako winced and twirled her straw plain old vanilla drink. “Bad dreams,” she said, not willing to elaborate. One, because she never wanted to talk about that particular battlefield, not even with Usagi who was her princess and future queen. And two, Usagi would already know what it was about.

Usagi nodded in perfect understanding. She did, probably. Other than herself, she was beginning to suspect Usagi maybe had the most complete memory of the Silver Millennium—though hers were probably less fire and guts and bleeding to death on some dusty battlefield and more moonlight kisses and dancing in the arms of her prince charming.

 _I’m not bitter_ , Minako thought bitterly.

“I’m sorry,” Usagi said. “I know this hasn’t been easy for you.”

Minako leaned at her hip, cheek resting on the cool plastic of the table and blinked owlishly at Usagi. When had her princess gotten so mature? Yes, she was going to be Neo Queen Serenity somewhere in the future, but Minako had never given her transformation much thought. She had always just assumed that she’d blink and she’d go from being the Usagi who slept in late and pigged out on chocolate brownies to the gentle queen who ruled the world.

“You really should give them a chance,” Usagi said. “They love Mamoru. They would die to protect him.”

“Fine,” Minako said sourly, “since a few years ago they were trying to kill him.”

“But that was different,” Usagi protested, and with such chagrin belief that her toes rocked forward and bumped into Minako’s shins. “And we’ve all done things we’re not proud of.”

Her stomach bottomed out at those words, spoken so casually that Usagi had to have no real idea what chord they struck in Minako. Oh, yes, there were so many things she wasn’t proud of.

Minako glared at her friend-leader-princess-queen that clearly said _I did not come here for sound logical arguments. I came here to bitch._

“Minako.” Usagi reached over the table for her hand.

“Oh no,” Minako muttered at the table, “not the puppy eyes.”

“I just want everyone to be happy. You aren’t happy.” Usagi’s eyes dared Minako to deny and since—well, it was true—she didn’t. “I know it’s hard, but if you could get passed everything, start over, start fresh, I think you would—”

Minako scooted her hand out from under Usagi’s, trying to ignore the guilt that gnawed at the inside of her stomach at the woman’s hurt look. She didn’t want to hurt Usagi, but Usagi didn’t understand. She was, arguably, the leader of the Senshi now but it was Minako who was in charge and a lifetime ago she had made that fatal error that had cost her princess, her friends, and her own life.

“Maybe I don’t want a fresh start.” _Staring over just means making the same mistakes._

Venus had taught her next incarnation well.

“But you were happy in the Silver Millennium, weren’t you? Happy with—”

“Some of us can’t be happy, not like that,” Minako muttered, turning her head until her forehead pressed into the table. Some of us shouldn’t be. “Some of us always have to choose duty over love.”

_Your love will be doomed for all eternity._

Shut up, Ace. You were a bitch anyway.

But well—bitches still had points, didn’t they? She rolled her hands along her stomach under the table. Usagi was still watching her.

“I don’t believe that,” Usagi said, with the quiet conviction that would serve her well as queen. She spoke it like a girl who had never plunged a sword into the heart of her lover. “You can have both. Duty and love.”

Not always, Minako thought but was unwilling to get in an argument about it. Not when there was yummy vanilla milkshakes to be had.

“Ah!” Usagi said, but to not Minako. She glanced at her friend through a fringe of blond bangs. She was staring at something over Minako’s head. “You’re late!”

_Late?_

“My apologies, Usagi.”

Minako’s eyes boggled at the table. _No way_. She sent Usagi a quick look of terror, and to her aghast a guilty look flashed across the woman’s face.

“Traitor!” she hissed.

“Remember, Minako,” Usagi held up her index and middle finger, “v for victory!”

Minako gave her a different salute with just her middle finger. Usagi was already stumbling out of her seat at the booth. She would have landed flat on her face—karma!—except a hand shot into Minako’s periphery and caught her.

“Thanks, Kad!” Usagi chirped. “I’ve got a thing to do now so I’m going to go!”

 _You don’t have a single goddamn thing to do!_ Minako thought hotly. Well, okay. This was Mamoru’s lunch hour so they were going to hustle back to his apartment and have a quickie.

She was the goddess of love and beauty. It wasn’t like she couldn’t not know when people were feeling the need to get it on.

“Ah,” Kunzite rumbled above her in his thick-as-scotch voice.

“It’s a very important thing!” Usagi assured him, and there was a sound of a scuffle behind Minako. “ _Sit_!” Kunzite’s body plopped into the seat Usagi had occupied. “Okay! Bye-bye!”

“Hurricane Usagi strikes again,” Minako muttered, finally lifting her head to watch her friend leave the arcade with a merry skip.

Kunzite drummed his fingers on the table until her attention swung back around to him. He gave Usagi’s abandoned milkshake a push. “What is—?”

“More calories than should legally be allowed,” Minako replied despite having just made a solemn oath that she would sit in silence until he left. Kunzite liked silence, though, so he probably wouldn’t have left. “And she never puts on anyway weight. I hate her.”

“She’s just a bundle of movement,” Kunzite said. “She burns through it like a solar flare.”

_It must be hard having a bundle of curiosity for a princess._

Her mind shuttered over the thoughts. Nope. She hadn’t signed up for a trip down memory lane, thank you very much. “So,” she slurped her vanilla shake, though it had begun to melt and didn’t taste nearly as a good. “Kad?”

“My name,” Kunzite said. He frowned at her, but what else was new? He was always frowning. All her memories of him were mostly him frowning— _goddess_ , had she actually found it sexy back in the day, his soberness? Even when she had been a living goddess, the princess of Venus, she had been a loud ball of energy. Kunzite had always been a marked contrast.

But he hadn’t always frowned, her traitorous mind pointed out. She had distinct memories of his smile, slow and deep, a hint of a dimple in the right corner, all the more potent for its rarity.

_Shut up, mind!_

“Do you even know my real name?” Kunzite asked her.

“Of course I do.” Kunzite. Of course, that’s not what he had meant. Mamoru had explained how part of Kunzite’s soul had been in the dark general under Beryl’s command, enough to shake off the dark energy and return to its gemstone prison, and then the rest had been stored away in a boy’s body, dormant and sleeping. Like how Venus was part of her, but also not. “Usagi told me.”

Usagi had. Explained how fate or innate knowledge of being needed had driven them to the American university where Mamoru studied and then, seeing him, something flicked on a light switch inside them. Close enough to how Usagi and her senshi had remembered each other to be unnerving.

In the explanation Usagi had definitely said what Kunzite’s name was, but Minako couldn’t remember it. Maybe she hadn’t really been paying attention, floored at the idea that— _Kunzite, alive?_

“Kadir Nahas,” he supplied.

Her legs tightened under the table. He’d grown up in Dubai. She knew that, and that made sense. He’d been a heavenly king, once upon a time, and his dominion had been the warm, golden sands Minako had never visited as Venus but had secretly longed to.

It was a strong name, and suited him. The way he said it made her shiver, maybe with something like premonition. Venus was clamoring inside her, though through the roil of emotions she couldn’t tell if it was in rage at being so close to an enemy or in want at being so close to a former lover.

She hitched her shoulders defensively. “Well, when you look at me, what do you see? Do you see Minako?”

“I try to,” Kunzite said, making Minako’s stomach jump with even more guilt. Because she was definitely not trying to see him as anything more than Kunzite, evil general.

She wriggled deeper into her seat, wishing she had worn something other than her flounced skirt. The plastic of the seating was sticking to the backs of her legs.

“Look, I am sorry about the whole—”

He raised an eyebrow. For Kunzite, various forms of small motions of his head tended to speak louder than words. Even after all this time, Minako could read them.

She rolled her eyes. “Okay. Not sorry about the whole spying on you thing because you were evil like two hot minutes ago and I just don’t get over things like trying to kill me, and my friends, and the entire freaking planet.”

“Hold a grudge, do you?” he said, but he didn’t sound annoyed. Was there a hint of humor in his eyes? Was he teasing her?

Okay, the humor was new. Not that original flavor Kunzite hadn’t had a sense of humor, but he’d never joke about something as serious as the one time he tried to conquer and enslave the known human race.

“I’m a hard-ass like that,” Minako agreed.

They lapsed into a somewhat awkward silence, and Minako covertly eyed him over the rim of her milkshake. Other than the first disastrous meeting in which Makoto had fried the entire block’s power board while the Shitennou had ducked and covered, she had never been this close to him before.

His hair was just as long, just as silvery, like he’d stolen pieces of the moon to hang there. She used to run her fingers through him, teasing him because it was the silkiest, loveliest hair she had ever felt before—prettier than her own. _Aren’t you supposed to be a ruthless warlord?_ she had teased, draping his hair over her naked breasts. _This feels like you have servants rubbing goddess-blessed water into it nightly._

He’d actually flushed, the first time she had seen him do it, and his reward for it had been a goddess kissing him from toe to head.

She slammed upward so quickly she banged her knees under the table. Kunzite looked alarmed.

And this right here was why you couldn’t get anywhere close to being involved again, Minako. Look at him, with his icy blue eyes you remember turning warm and dark. You know how his arms feel lifting you, anchoring you to a wall, his lips on your neck, his—

_Time to bail._

“I gotta go,” Minako said, leaping to her feet. “I’ve got a—a thing to do, too.”

Kunzite caught her wrist, and she jolted, unable to stop herself from thinking— _WWVD_? What Would Venus Do? Venus? Venus would abso-freaking-lutely plant herself in his big, strong lap and start purring. Venus had felt a connection to him minute one, and Venus had always been one to follow her desires without a single worry to the future.

Had Minako ever truly been like that? She didn’t think so.

“Unless you want this arcade to get a look at a girl breaking the hand of a man almost three times her size, you better let go of the wrist, buddy,” she growled.

“My apologies.” He released her without another word. “It was—an automatic habit.”

“Grabbing at women?”

He frowned, leaving deep lines at the corners of his mouth. He was older than he’d been in the Silver Millennium, and there was a kind of world-weariness in his eyes that only came with the years Kunzite had never been allowed.

“I’m not going—I won’t hurt you, not again.”

“Of course you won’t.” Minako planted her hands on the table and leaned forward. He had always smelled so crisp and clean, like a cool desert night, and for a brief moment she allowed her senses to be overwhelmed by it. Could she really blame Makoto or even Ami—who pretended Zoisite didn’t finagle his way onto her couch every night even though she didn’t fool anyone? The need to lean into him until her forehead touched his powerful shoulder was enough to buckle her knees and she hated him. Mostly. “Do you know why?”

Kunzite shook his head. There was an odd glint in those icy blue eyes, a glint she couldn’t place from a time long passed. It was new and all the more dangerous because of it. Over the table, his fingers closed into a fist.

“Because I’m not going to let you.”

Let them him chew on that, Minako thought, and stormed out of the arcade.

 

 

 

 

She loved her girls dearly, but there were levels. Not that she loved one more or one less, but their relationships were different. Usagi was their world, in ways each other wasn’t, and Minako had always felt a bone-deep, intrinsic understanding of Rei in ways she didn’t with Ami or Makoto.

 _Love and war._ The two went oddly hand in hand. She and Rei had always worked well together, probably for that reason.

She laid on a pallet beside the fire. It was freezing outside, but with Rei’s fire roaring Minako was sweltering in shorts and a tank top. Even in her hakama, Rei looked unaffected by the heat, staring intently into the curled tongues of flame.

“So what numbers should I choose for the lottery?”

Rei didn’t even bother getting mad about it. Nearly a decade, she had gotten used to Minako’s less than respectful commentary.

“Why do you bother anyway?” Minako mused, throwing a hand upward to tangle her fingers into the wispy strands of grey smoke. “We know what’s going to happen. World gets frozen over, everyone takes a nap, Usagi wakes up, crowns herself queen, utopia city. Happily ever after.”

“The future is not written in stone,” Rei intoned, shooting a look out of the side of her eye. The firelight played over her raven-dark hair, casting near violet hues in it. “King Endymion didn’t mention the heavenly kings, did he?”

“Maybe he wanted to keep it on the DL,” Minako said, reasonably. “Knowing too much about the future changes the future, ya know?” She frowned, though. She couldn’t help but feel like Rei was right, that the Shitennou weren’t in that particular future they had visited. What did that mean? Did it matter? Had the four of them upset the tenuous balance that lead to the Crystal Tokyo future?

Which would make them evil. _I knew it._

“If the future has been changed, then it’s important we know by how much and if Crystal Tokyo’s even a possibility for us now.”

Minako rolled onto her stomach, propping her chin under her hand. “You think it might not be in the cards for us anymore?” Rei didn’t answer. A slow catlike grin crawled up her lips. “If we behead ourselves some heavenly kings maybe we can get right back on track. I’ll get my sword.”

Another glance out of the corner of Rei’s eye.

“C’mon, wouldn’t you like to feed Jadeite to some fire again?”

“Junichi.”

“What?”

“His name is Junichi Fujimoto.”

Minako blinked. Rei stared intently into her flames. Minako blinked again. And again. She reared up onto her knees.

“Oh my God.”

Rei’s shoulders stiffened.

“Oh my God!” Minako bellowed and launched herself at Rei. They tumbled onto the wooden floor, scuffling. “Traitor! _Ate te Brute!_ ”

“It’s _et tu, Brute_ , you idiot,” Rei snarled against her elbow. Minako’s knee jammed into her hip and she yelped. Her sharp, pensive-like teeth bit into Minako’s arm.

“Ow! I can’t believe you bit me! I could have rabies now.” Their limbs tangled and they rolled, more like dogs than the deadly warrior they had been forged into. “My stunning good looks! What am I going to do now? Look like you?”

The flat of Rei’s palm plowed into Minako’s stomach. The air whooshed out of her in a rush and they rolled again.

“Get off me, Minako, you weigh a ton,” Rei said around a mouthful of Minako’s hair.

“ _Ooooooh._ You take that back, bitch!” They rolled again, but this time Rei managed to get her in a choke hold, holding her against the floor as Minako bucked under her. “You’re the one who feels like a fat cow!”

They scuffled some more. Rei was in a rare mood, Minako could tell, angry but mostly at herself. Which made her all that more dangerous because Rei couldn’t go around beating herself up—not physically, anyway—so she had to found someone else to take it out on.

“It’s not my fault you feel all guilty because you wanna bed down with the enemy!” Minako snarled. “Sure he tried to kill us—tried to kill Usagi—but bygones, right? What’s it matter if he’s got a big dick!”

She had crossed a line, and she knew it, was already opening her mouth to apologize for the low blow—Minako had no filter, but she knew lines in the sands and knew when not to cross them and she had just pole vaulted over this one—when Rei’s fist plowed into her face.

“You have no idea what the hell you’re talking about!” Rei snapped. “It’s so easy for you! One guy falls through you just hop into bed with the next!”

Contriteness fled as a red haze bled over Minako’s eyes. She reared her knee upward and plowed it into Rei’s stomach. Minako’s girls had never made her feel bad about her string of half-boyfriends, even if they didn’t get why, but she and Rei were the dirty fighters of the group. They both knew where the cheap shots were and would take them to win a fight. She thought Rei might have regretted saying that, and in a few days Rei would find ways to apologize without saying I’m sorry because this was Rei, but they were both to angry now to relent now.

But it hurt, okay? Yes, her relationships were always shallow, always kept light and cut off with the first show attachment. She couldn’t forget, could never let herself forget, what the cost of it was. And it was wrong to feel brimming rage at Rei for not understanding—because Minako didn’t want her to understand. She kept her secrets for a reason.

Well, logic had never an adjective regularly assigned to Minako.

“Jealous ‘cause I know how to have a good time?” she snarled through gritted teeth. “It’s not my fault you’re a frigid ice-bitch!”

The top of Rei’s head plowed into Minako’s as they rolled again. “It’s worse than that! Goddess of love and beauty—who refuses to feel anything but a good time! Not all of us can turn it off like that, and you don’t get to judge us for it!”

Judge them? Was that what she was doing? _No_ , Minako thought stubbornly, _teasing them? Sure. Worried about them? Definitely. Trying to protect them? Of course_. She wasn’t judging them. She would never.

“Well,” drawled a voice from the threshold of the sliding door, “I wish I had a camera.”

They stilled, Rei’s hand closed around Minako’s throat and Minako’s fist coiled into Rei’s hair. Jadeite—oh _sorry_ Junichi—watched, arms crossed and hip leaning against the door frame, amusement putting a hard gleam into his eyes.

“Oh, _puh-lease_ ,” Minako drawled, bucking against Rei. “This is nothing to get your rocks off to. Come around on Mud-Wrestling Mondays. I wear a bikini for the occasion.”

Jadeite’s eyes widened an inch, but he recovered well, simply kicking one side of lips up in an amusement I’ve-seen-it-all kind of smile. Yeah, Jadeite had always been a bit of a playboy. Mars used to kick her nose up at how everyone, men and women, had fallen over for him.

“Rei doesn’t,” Minako said, “but that’s for the best since she would clearly only be eclipsed by my intense beauty and bammin’ slammin’ bootylicious bod.”

Rei gave a huff of disbelief and clamored off of Minako. Minako made an exaggerated show of coughing and rubbing her throttled throat.

“Did you need something?” Rei asked Jade—Junichi—oh damn she was never going to remember it. Jadeite it was.

“A shrine visitor was asking for you,” Jadeite said. Minako, goddess of love and beauty that she was, noted the subtle tightening of his body now that Rei had her attention on him. The way his body, almost imperceptible, angled toward her. Not like he was trying to enter her personal space, more like he was shielding her, prepared to take a blow meant for her.

Ugh. Minako tried to not find it romantic, reminding herself that not too long ago Jadeite had knocked Rei out and dragged her onto a demon bus. She hadn’t been there, but the point stood.

“I’ll see to it,” Rei said, brushing off the invisible lint on her hakama. She sent Minako a scathing look. Smoothing this tussle over wasn’t going to be as simple as showing up at the shrine with a box of pizza. Rei was going to stew about it for days. “Do you need a babysitter?”

Minako considered it, and then sent Jadeite a feline grin. “Juni will keep me company, won’t he?”

Jadeite’s eyes trailed over the exposed skin below her the hemline of her tank top as it rode up. There was a bit of masculine appreciation there, because yeah Minako looked good but—but that was kind of it. A clinical overview that said _well yeah she’s good looking but not my style_. His eyes went right back to Rei.

As for that—suspicions confirmed. Rei looked about ready to toast her ass. Which meant she was jealous.

Minako rolled onto her stomach, then her knees, and then pushed herself to her feet. Rei and Jadeite hadn’t done the nasty because all she was sensing was hip-high sexual tension but Jadeite was ready, able and willing and Rei was like a livewire.

“That sounds like work,” she drawled, “so I’m actually going to jet anyway. You crazy kids have fun.” She sidled up to Jadeite and sent him an angled look down her nose. “We have decided not to behead you,” she intoned seriously.

Jadeite’s eyes sought out Rei’s again. “Thank you?” he hedged.

She patted his cheek. “But that doesn’t mean a: I like you, b: you aren’t totally evil, c: I won’t break your neck at some point later in time.”

Rei muttered something under her breath, brushing passed both them, and stomped outside. Jadeite looked after her with such absolutely longing that Minako decided to take pity on him because she was a soft touch. She might have been duking it out with Rei about him only moments before, but that was Senshi business and Minako was the leader—she was supposed to ride her soldiers hard.

But a goddess of love and beauty did have her duties, too.

“She’s slow to forgive, but keep at it. If she didn’t want you around, you’d know. And also probably be dead.” She knew Junichi was determined to mend broken bridges, as he’d given up a fairly lucrative career to come work for spit at the Hiwaka Shrine. He’d been apparently some pretty well known photographer and she supposed she could understand that. He’d always had an eye for illusions and shadow. 

“Like you?” Jadeite said.

“Me?” Minako blinked in surprise. “Oh no. Rei’s Our Blistering Lady of the Unrelenting Fires. I’m easy going but not easy Minako.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That sounds like doubt, mister, and it’s not a way to get me on your side,” she announced.

She and Jadeite had always had a bit in common, being the tricksters of the group, but Jadeite didn’t seem to be in the mood to play along. He observed her with eyes that maybe saw a little too much—eyes that reminded her that Rei wasn’t the only who could sense the mysteries of the great beyond.

“You’re not like what you were before. You’re not nearly as terrifying,” he said at last.

She drew herself to her full height. “I’ll have you know I can kick your ass eight ways from Sunday, and have.”

“No, I mean—” He shrugged. “All of you, back then, you were so entrenched with all that power and magic from the crystals that you didn’t feel real.”

Had they? She remembered sitting around next to Princess Serenity, pitying the earthlings and their tiny, inconsequential lifespans. Serenity had looked so sad, and Venus had known why, and had still pushed—harsh in ways Minako never was.

_“Everything on that planet dies, and long before us, my princess,” Venus had observed sadly. She hadn’t met Kunzite yet, and it was more a detached pitying than anything else. “What’s the point of beauty if it’s so fleeting?”_

_“That just makes it so much more beautiful,” Serenity had said, far wiser than Venus gave her credit for._

Minako knew it was a low blow, and felt bad about it before the words had even escaped her mouth, but she said, “Bet you we felt pretty real when you killed us though, huh?”

Jadeite’s face took a particularly green look—no doubt reliving the same memories she was. He hadn’t touched Mars, but only because Venus hadn’t let him.

Not that it had mattered in the end, Minako thought, heart clenching in her chest.

Rei would probably try to kick her ass again, so Minako huffed it, leaving Jadeite staring after her like he had been kicked in the solar plexus.

Hey, funny story. She’d done that once.

 

 

 

 

Her last line of defense was Michiru and Haruka because they didn’t have an ancient, tragic romance from another life to pine over. They were in total lesbians, and that hadn’t changed since the Silver Millennium.

They were so domestic, too. Even know Minako could smell something pasta-y cooking in the kitchen as Michiru poured them tea. She, Haruka, and Hotaru had spent two years in England and had brought back new habits, and had actually made Minako a bit homesick for London town. Michiru liked to make English style tea—which Minako had never really acquired a taste for—and those delicious sugary bread cakes called scones—which Minako had somehow missed out on during her time in England, a true travesty. Hotaru loved them, so Michiru ended up making them by the batch.

Minako was currently stuffing her face with three of them.

“I didn’t know one could unhinge one’s jaw that far,” Haruka observed. “You’re like a snake.”

“Yeah, a girl’s willing to do just about anything to get what she wants into her mouth.”

Haruka snickered.

“ _Ewwwwww_ ,” Minako muttered, tossing a scone at Haruka’s face. “But since we’re on the the subject, I have no gag relax.”

“TMI!” Michiru called from the kitchen.

“Sharing is caring!” Minako called back, and sunk back down into their couch. She liked their house, mostly because it was big. If she was a world famous Formula One driver and a top-billed violinist she’d buy a big house, too.

Hotaru was out, apparently giving making friends a gaming chance. It was hard on the girl, Minako knew. She’d gone from being a child to a full grown woman to a baby to a child all while carrying around the Silence Glaive. It hadn’t exactly allowed her to cultivate people skills, which hadn’t been all the impressive to start with. Even now, after nearly six years of being allowed to age normally, on the cusp of womanhood, Hotaru was an owlish recluse.

It didn’t help that both Chibiusa and Setsuna were gone, one back to the future and the other back to the time gate, respectively. Minako had loved Chibiusa, at first because she was an extension of Usagi and then later because she was Chibiusa, but she hadn’t done Hotaru any favors by being the center of her world.

 _What’s she going to do when Chibiusa finally does come along? She’ll be almost twenty years her senior._ She knew those thoughts worried Michiru and Haruka.

Michiru walked into the living room, carrying another plate of scones. Her fingers skimmed along the back of Haruka’s neck as she crossed behind the couch. Maybe coming here was a bad idea, Minako thought, a shaft of longing lodging into her chest.

She wanted that. That connection the two of them had. Rei had been right, because Rei was always right. Minako had avoided that sense of connection outside the Senshi. It was dangerous, and once it had gotten her killed.

_Your love will be doomed for all eternity._

Maybe Ace had been trying to do her a solid, even if he was an asshole. She had always been torn between love and duty. Maybe he was telling her don’t be, just choose duty. But that didn’t mean she didn’t want it so bad her teeth ached.

“How do you forgive someone the horrible things they’ve done?” Minako asked suddenly, falling forward onto the couch. “I mean, say you really want to but something keeps stopping you. Like a self-preservation instinct?”

Michiru and Haruka were a bit older than all of them, and that had always made them seem a bit wiser, too. Michiru especially. Minako felt a special kind of kinship with her. They had been soldiers alone for a long time, before Minako had found Usagi and the others and Michiru had found Haruka.

They shared a look, a silence communication that Usagi and Mamoru did too sometimes. Haruka sighed and leaned back, one arm thrown over the side of the couch as Michiru leaned into her side.

“I don’t think anyone can truly explain how, or if, you can,” Michiru answered.

“But what would you do?” Minako pressed.

The woman chewed her lips thoughtfully. “I suppose I would consider everything they had done, both positive and negative, and weight them. I would try to see if there was a possibility that I even could forgive.”

“I wouldn’t forgive, at all,” Haruka said, helpfully. Michiru giggled and nuzzled her neck. “But if it helps, Usagi would want you to forgive, eh?”

Obviously. Usagi was the Queen of the Second Chances. Minako didn’t believe she had the capacity the way her princess did. She carried her grudges around like notches on her belt.

“Usagi’s a soft touch,” Minako muttered. She got a nod of agreement from both of them.

Then again, Michiru and Haruka were soldiers in the way Minako and her girls weren’t. They’d always been about the Big Picture, dedicated to the galaxy, not the moon princess. But now that they had sworn to protect Usagi at all costs it made them more ruthless, too. Maybe more dangerous. They’d kill without hesitation, even if it wasn’t what Usagi wanted.

It was pretty obvious that their return to Japan had coincided with the return of Mamoru’s generals six months ago.

“Maybe some people can’t be happy,” Minako mused.

Haruka laughed at that. “Don’t let Usagi hear you say that. She’d tan your hide.”

They all laughed, because it was true.

 

 

 

 

_Earth had always been surprisingly easy to travel to, if one had been so inclined. Inclined to break several laws, that is. Venus has never been inclined, had left the Earth-gazing to her young charge. Maybe if she had took Serenity’s obsession a bit more seriously she could have realized what was at the center of it._

_Now what’s done is done. As the avatar of love and beauty she knows this was no mere infatuation with a handsome Earth prince that will fade with time. All she and the others can try to lessen the collateral damage._

_The Earth Palace is nothing like the structures of the Moon Kingdom, but there’s something charming about the damp stones and the rustic halls. The first time she had been here she had wrinkled her nose at a—oh what had they called it? A mead hall?—but as she heard the raucous laughter from beyond the door, voices raised in some lewd song dedicated to a woman’s fine attributes, she took pause and smiled._

_Charming. If crude._

_A couple is giggling and drunkenly maneuvering down the hall. Venus is invisible to their eyes, which had seemed wise until this moment. Now it felt like she’s missing out on all the fun._

_She materializes before their eyes, and she knows she’s a sight to behold. Venusian culture is open, about nearly everything—including nudity—and since it’s summer in this section of earth she hadn’t seen a point in anything but her short chiton, so thin that even in the dull light one could see all the flesh beneath._

_Earthlings have such a strange aversion to nakedness. She finds it delightful._

_“The goddess of love and beauty blesses this union!” Venus intones gravely, never mind that she can’t really bless anything, and flicks out her golden tresses._

_She would have cloaked herself in invisibility again, expect someone curls a hand at her elbow. Alarm skitters up her back before recognition comes. She smiles, feline in her glee, and turns to glance up at General Kunzite._

_He’s already pulling her along and even though breaking out of his grasp would be easy, she likes his sense of command and allows herself to be dragged along._

_“You about scared the life out of them,” Kunzite tells her in his gravelly tone._

_Venus snorts. “I merely consecrated their fornication. They should be honored.”_

_Kunzite isn’t listening to her. She knows once they were in his room, and beneath closed doors her general was quite a different man, still quiet and solemn but there was a chord of passion there that he kept leashed around others. The general she had heard soldiers muttering about ice water in his veins was anything but cold._

_“Your princess isn’t here,” Kunzite says, in his smooth, heavy voice. His thumb and forefinger plays with the wispy fabric at her shoulder. “Endymion is patrolling the border villages with Jadeite.”_

_No. Princess Serenity is indeed safety tucked away in mother’s solar, pouting because Endymion had told her under no circumstances that she was to travel with him—it was far too dangerous. The poor earthling prince doesn’t know that Serenity is more than capable of caring for herself._

_His fingers move over her clavicle. “No,” she agrees, surprised she was breathless. “She is not.”_

_This isn’t the first time she had found herself in Kunzite’s room, but it is the first without ferrying Serenity home as the pretense for it. It’s a subtle change in how they work together. Venus shifts._

_The fabric of her chiton tears so easily beneath his insistent tug. It pools at her foot in a puddle of silk as he frames her narrow hips, lifts her, her legs winding around his. She can feel him, hot and hard, against her thigh and shivers against him and murmurs in heady Venusian about how much he pleases her. Kunzite doesn’t speak a lick of her native tongue, but he understands the sentiment._

_His bed is sturdy, his furs coarse, but Venus doesn’t notice. Her nails roll down his flanks, urging him up and over. Normally, she doesn’t much care for this position but she likes to watch Kunzite, reveling in his masculinity, his quiet power._

_One powerful hand cups her breast, kneading. Venus moans beneath him, canting her hips. Oh yes, she very much likes this earthling. She might even keep him, when it was all said and done. If Serenity can thumb her nose up at tradition, why can’t Venus?_

_He presses into her, shoulders slick with sweat, mouth curling over one breast, suckling noisily. Venus murmurs encouragements, easing him deeper inside her willing body._

_“Kunzite,” she whispers into his shoulder, and in Venusian because she wasn’t a fool. “Kunzite, I think I might love you.”_

 

 

 

 

It wasn’t the first time Minako had woke up with her hand down her pants, fingers rolling against her wet slit. The dreams had started coming once she had hit puberty, as if Venus had decided she was old enough to remember them. Kunzite’s face had been shadowed then, and she hadn’t remembered his betrayal, and it had felt less like a mistake to get off to memories of intense orgasms with an Earthling general.

“Ugh.” She dragged her hand free, her flesh weeping with unmet needs, and rolled onto her stomach.

She knew from experience she wasn’t going to go back to sleep, and she was way too stubborn to masturbate to memories of Kunzite, even though she was desperate for release. Which meant—a nighttime jog.

Jogging shorts and an under armor shirt, and no bra because fuck it she wasn’t trying to impress anyone anyway and then, because she was feeling particularly wild, she leapt out of her second-story apartment wind and landed on sneaker-clad feet.

Makoto was their Amazon warrior, obviously, and the only sport Minako was really good at was volleyball, but she could run like the wind when inclined. And considering the ball of tension in her stomach, she was inclined.

It was a surprisingly warm winter night, though it was still chilly enough to cool the beads of sweater as they popped up on her neck. Her feet slapped against asphalt as she gulped in mouthfuls of cold air, forcing her lungs to work overtime, anything to find release from the pent-up energy inside her.

 _You could just find someone to work all your kinks_ , she thought to herself, not for the first time. Problem was very few guys had waist-length, silky smooth silvery hair and broad shoulders and narrow hips. And the one that did—yeah not happening.

She ducked around a corner, racing over uneven sidewalk. No one was out tonight in this part of town, and that was for the best. She wasn’t in the mood for people, and she probably would have just plowed over anyone who got in her way.

But then—

Someone was racing along behind her, and catching up. She wasn’t really worried—because hey, goddess of love and beauty and leader of the Senshi, one of the deadliest women on the face of the earth, you know? someone wanted to mess with her _bring it the fuck on_ —but there was this sense of dread in the pit of her stomach.

Yup. Quick glance behind her showed her exactly what she thought. Kunzite, long hair tied into a loose ponytail, wearing running shorts and no shirt—Minako tried not to goggle; she had never see this particular incarnation of him without his Armani and patent leather this close up before—moonlight gleaming over a sweaty chest.

She had just been dreaming about that chest, goddamnit!

Scowling, she kicked into overdrive, letting her supernatural strength fuel her. Kunzite kept pace for pace, his much longer stride eating the ground beneath them, swallowing distance. No! She wasn’t in the mood to play nice when all she wanted to do was take a chunk of out of him—and she couldn’t decide if in the sexy way or not.

“Challenge accepted!” she shouted over her shoulder, turning sharply down an alleyway, using the angled momentum to leap onto the roof of the nearest building. She tucked and rolled, throwing her arms out straight to even out her weight. She felt him clear his own leap as she came back to her own feet.

Without breaking stride to she leapt to the next one, running before her left foot had even properly hit the cement. Kunzite kept pace, barely making a sound as he landed behind her. She leapt to the next building. He followed.

What was she going to do if he caught her? What would she do if he didn’t?

_WWVD?_

Well, she wasn’t Venus. She was Minako. Venus was wild as the wind, but tempered through blood and battle. Minako wasn’t the same as Venus, had experiences and freedoms the goddess and princess never had. She could ask what Venus would do, but that didn’t mean it was right the right for her.

She leapt off the next battle, sneakers skidding along damp earth. It was a courtyard of some sort, ivy curling around a wrought-iron fence, canopied by a weeping willow tree. Her lungs were burning from the exertion, sucking in hard gulps of air as she swung her arms as she worked through the buildup of phlegm. Kunzite landed in the courtyard as well, looking as if he had just had a nice, moonlight walk instead of a leaping and hurtling over rooftops.

“I didn’t call for an escort service!” she crowed. “Shove off, Fatal Attraction.”

He frowned. He’d probably never even seen that movie—which was a dying shame since Michael Douglas was hot in that flick.

He was staring at her like he wanted to devour her. It made her the muscles in her stomach quiver, and it seemed like the run hadn’t alleviated any of her tension. It had just primed her. She was in a bad way.

“Why are you here?”

“You had a dream, too, didn’t you?” Kunzite asked.

“I have dreams all the time. I have a very active imagination,” she snapped.

“A very specific one,” Kunzite pressed, undaunted by Minako’s hasty retreat toward the back wall of the courtyard. “About us?”

“Nope,” she lied between her teeth. “I was too busy having sweet, sweet dreams about Brad Pitt’s muscle-y torso. You weren’t a player in any of it.”

He reached for her, curling a hand lightly at her elbow, not a grip that constrained her. She could have easily broken free of him, leapt over the fence. Instead, she backed up again, until the prickly ivy entwined around the iron poked her back. Kunzite followed her, barracking her between his body and the fence. The weeping willow bowed over them both.

“I think we should talk,” Kunzite said.

His body was heavy and warm, she could already imagine it pressing it into her.

“I don’t want to talk,” she said. _WWVD_ , and closed the last distance between them, throwing her arms around his neck and bringing herself up onto her tiptoes to kiss the living daylights out of him. Kunzite stiffened beneath her and then, oh then, his arms closed around her waist and he lifted her fully against him.

Yes. Yes. This is what she had needed all along. She hooked a leg around his hip, rubbing her crotch against the hard line of his thigh. Ah yes. She closed her mind off to things like logic and reason. They didn’t matter, right now.

His fingers pressed into the small of her back, fingers digging into her flesh. The powerful expanse of his chest pressed into hers as he backed up completely against the gate, mouth slanting over hers, biting hungrily onto her bottom lip. He scooted her up the fence, rubbing her against him, and she could feel his cock, hard and pressing up against his cotton running shorts.

“Wait, wait,” he tried to say, yanking his mouth away. But he wasn’t listening to himself, already closing his lips around her neck and suckling greedily.

“No,” Minako said. She didn’t want to wait. She had a small window of opportunity here before all the guilt and reasons why she shouldn’t set in and she needed to take advantage of it and get laid, and get laid by the one singular man she wanted. “Absolutely no thinking. I forbid it.”

He cupped a hand on her breast over the fabric of her under armor and groaned huskily as her peddled nipple poked at his palm. Oh right, no bra. If she wasn’t more concerned with gyrating her hips toward him she might have congratulated herself on her foresight.

Kunzite worked his other hand between them, pushing through the elastic of her running shorts. She shuddered and then stilled as he tugged at the top of her underwear. The world was spinning wildly beyond him so she decided it was best not to pay attention to it. She dragged her tongue from his nipple to the dip of his clavicle, digging it into his flesh. He groaned against her neck and, _ah there_ , his big hand finally pushed passed her panties and into her warm, wet flesh.

“You’ve always been so small,” he murmured, like a man drunk, and pushed a finger into her. She cried out, arching upward. “ _So_ tight.”

Minako rocked down on the invading finger, desperate to feel him. The Kunzite from Venus’s memories would have never allowed them to do something like this, with people only a few feet away. He’d never even shown an interest in her whenever they were around his men, even though she’d been able to feel his desire.

He curled the finger inside her, pumping his hand, and she hissed between her teeth, legs falling open wider around his waist, canting her hips upward.

Kunzite worked a hand under the hemline of her shirt, pushing up until it bunched over her breasts. She sucked in a breath, making them bounce, and he leaned forward, pulling one mound into his mouth, closing his teeth around her nipple until she yelped.

Another finger. Her eyes fluttered closed, lips parted, as she grinded down on his hand, the heel of his palm pressing against her clit. She clawed at his flanks, leaving red lines down his sides as she tried to tell him to go faster, to go harder, how much she needed this.

Her fingers closed around the waistline of his running shorts, yanking. He stepped out of them with a growl, and she closed a hand around his cock, drunk on his rumble of pleasure. Just as big as Venus’s distorted memories inside her. His size had never frightened her, but always impressed.

“Please,” she hissed on a pained breath, slamming down on his hand until his fingers were buried inside her up to the knuckles. Her hands stroked up and down the legth of his cock, sliding along sweat and precome. Her mouth slackened at the memory of what it had tasted like, how he had bucked, completely under her control, when she had pushed him passed her lips. Her wetness leaked over and onto his palms. She felt no shame, only hot, angry need. “Please.”

His mouth found hers again, tongue pressing inside her mouth as his hips rocked against hers. His cock slid slickly against her belly and she shuddered, clamping around his fingers as she milked them deeper into her body. Didn’t he know she needed this? Couldn’t wait for it? Kunzite had always been so aware of their differences, how much bigger she was, and Venus had been too but not for the same reasons. She had taken a particular thrill in it, and he a particular worry.

She wrapped her arms around his neck again, tugging at his hair until it braceleted around her fingers. He pulled her tongue into his mouth and sucked, hard. He tasted like coffee and some hot spice she couldn’t name.

Bracing her on one powerful thigh, he reached between them and push her running shorts and panties to the side. A pity, really, because she wore the cutest thong and he couldn’t even appreciate it, but oh well. Sacrifices for pleasure had to be made.

He rubbed the head of his cock along her saturated slit, pausing to press it against her throbbing clit as she swallowed rapidly, trying to push air into her suffocating lungs. He’d never been such a malicious tease before, but there was a glint in his eyes and a flash of his white smile as she moaned in frustration when he only played with her folds.

“I swear to God,” she whimpered, throat trembling. “I’m going to murder you if you don’t— _ah_ —!”

Without a word, he’d been settling her against his hips, and pressed the crown of his cock into her aching entrance. She threw her head back in reckless abandon, instinctively arching her hips to allow him to slide in deeper. No one had ever filled her quite like Kunzite could, and another a bite of longing knifed through her even as he eased into her.

He bowed over her, reaching behind her to grip the iron bars of the fence and brace himself as he panted. His shoulders gleamed silver in dull moonlight, strands of hair sticking to his sweaty back.

Connected like this, she felt oddly tender about it all and stroked a hand down his sides, rocking on him gently. Kunzite let out a strangled breath and nudged himself forward another inch, seating himself fully inside her. Minako locked her knees, white-hot sparks of electricity showering in front of her eyes.

“ _Oh_ ,” she breathed. “ _Oh_.”

He leaned his hips back, and then snapped them forward, rattling her straight to her bones. The bladed edge of pain and pleasure set Minako’s teeth on edge as she pushed to meet his rough thrust, snagging his earlobe with her teeth.

She baited him on. Harder, faster, more more _more_ until she couldn’t remember how to form coherent sentences. The muscles in her womb constricted, jumped, and he cupped her breasts again, lifting them to his hot mouth.

Needing to come so bad, she reached between them, to the slick, wet place where he plowed into her. Her fingers slid along his slippery length, over a thick, thumping vein as he snarled, and to the hood of her sex, where the hypersensitive bundle of nerves demanded she touch.

Kunzite reared back, creating just enough space between them so he could watch her pleasure herself, rubbing her clit until she was all but weeping from the pleasure of his thrusts and her touches.

Finally, he snagged her wrist and dragged her hand back upward, pulling her fingers into his mouth. The slurping sound he made was lewd and wonderful as his tongue moved over each finger in a delicate, hot caress.

It was enough.

Minako clamped down on him with a scream, probably would have woke the entire neighborhood with it if Kunzite had dropped her hand and slammed his mouth back over hers, silencing her. His thrusts became erratic and wild, his heart thumping wildly when it bumped against her chest.

Again she reached down, this time cupping his balls, kneading them. He shuddered, a great, big powerful beast completely under her command, and pulled her flush against her. A few more thrusts and he was shuddering again, seed and juices leaking down her thighs.

 _Oh Goddess, it felt so good_. It had been so long, so terribly long, since she had felt this full, and never like this. Never with anyone but him.

He leaned her back against the gate, helping her down to her shaking feet, and panted into her shoulder. The moon watched above them, and Minako thought the bitch might be judging her. _So much for a stalwart, commanding leader of the Senshi._

Fuck her. She didn’t know Minako’s life.

But the contentment that infused her bones frightened her, as did the desire to simply remain—remain in his arms, let him hold and stroke a hand through her hair, murmuring mindlessly into her skin.

Alarm bolted up her spine. “Crap,” she muttered, and shoved against him. Kunzite was so boneless and sated—she tried to pretend didn’t feel absurdly proud about how rode hard and put away wet he looked—that he fell onto his butt.

He blinked blearily up at her.

Minako yanked her shirt down, fixed her sticky shorts, and clamored over the fence without looking back.

_Mother Nature thou art a fickle bitch and I’m coming for you._

 

 

 

 

Okay, Minako thought, soaking in the tub, you slept with him. You had toe-curling mind-numbing not-gonna-walk-straight-for-a-few-days sex with him. It happens. No one can judge you.

She sent a scowl at her rubber ducky, having a distinct impression she was being judged.

“What was I was supposed to do?” she demanded the yellow fiend, glancing groggily down at her sore breasts. They were ringed with red circles from where his teeth had clamped, and she knew she’d have the imprint of his fingers on her hips. “It’d have been easier to say no if he wasn’t so hot.”

Hotter, even, than back in the Silver Millennium. He looked all but the same, but Kunzite’s ingrained seriousness was tempered with a tenderness he hadn’t possessed when she had first met him, there were laugh lines and frown lines at the corners of his mouth, his eyes, that she couldn’t remember being there before.

He was different. He wasn’t the same.

Minako dragged her knees up to her feet, sending frothy bubbles sloshing over the sides of the tub.

It had been a few hours, and he hadn’t called her. She wasn’t upset about it or anything, since it was a mistake and she was never going to do it again.

She sniffled pathetically. She wished she could call Usagi or Rei or Ami or Makoto, but she felt like the odd man out. They wouldn’t understand, and how could she explain? The bad memories she carried, lodging into her heart like old scarring, were private and she had sworn she’d never make someone else go through the same pain she had.

The possibility of calling Artemis was nixed. He would be on her side, no doubt, because Artemis was always on her side, even when Minako was wrong. But somehow that didn’t really make her feel better. She wanted someone on her side because she was right, because they understood, not just because. Besides, she didn’t want to ruin his honeymoon-slash-reconnaissance with Luna.

_Your love will be doomed for all eternity._

“I’m a mess,” she muttered, dragging her hands through her hair. “What am I going to do?”

Forgive? Forget? Try to move on? And if she did, if she dared, what would happen? She knew what Venus had paid, what would Minako? The impossibility was sharp in her chest.

Or it was the memory of that excruciating pain?

She reached up and pushed her right breast to the side, staring down at the fine, white line hidden just below the curve of her flesh. She’d been born with it, and it had haunted her for years until she had realized what it was.

A reminder—her first understanding of it. A scar that had been carried down the ages as a bitter souvenir of Venus. None of the girls knew about it, and she had never asked them if their bodies shared similar markings. Perhaps Venus was the only who’d meant to be marred, perhaps it was a token from Queen Serenity of the Moon. You were supposed to defend us. She had never shared it, like it a treasure she hoarded. A red string around her finger. A forget-me-not. Just touching it made her hands trouble with a sour cocktail of grief and rage and hate. Venus’s skin had been unmarred until she had left herself vulnerable.

When the memory of how Venus had earned it had first flowed through her Minako, fifteen and shaking, staring at her naked body just beginning its transformation into womanhood, had felt a pool of something white and hot in her stomach. An acidic tang of anger and hate, her first true sense of failure. The memory had haunted her since.

_A sword, buried to the hilt in her chest. The fire at her spine, the weakening arms around her, clutching her even as she struggles. She will not suffer this last insult. She will not die in his arms._

_Could he not even allow her to die in peace, to make penance for her failures?_

_“Venus—Venus.” He sounds—horrified? Is he horrified? His blood plasters the front of her fuku to her body, slick and hot. “Forgive me.”_

_She laughs at him, bitter and hard. “Never.”_

 

 

 

 

She avoided her girls, and not because she felt guilty or shamed about anything—especially not climbing Kunzite like a tree in that courtyard. No, she was avoiding them because she was angry at them. They were Traitors in the House of Senshi!

And no texts or calls of voicemails from Kunzite, not that she was counting on them.

But Nephrite showing up at her door was a surprise.

“Oh,” he intoned, “so you aren’t dead.”

She give him a one-finger salute that he smirked at. She tried to recall what his new name was, but again it was one of those things she had tuned out when Usagi had first revealed them. She had been too busy reaching for her chain.

“Nathan—Nathan St. Paul,” she said on the snap of her fingers. “Ha!”

Nephrite cocked his head.

“Forget it. It’s not about you.” She considered the peevish pleasure of slamming the door in his face, but she wasn’t feeling that childish today. “What do you want? Makoto sent you to check up on me?”

“No. She said something along the lines of,” he shrugged in a rather impressive imitation of Makoto, “Minako needs to go off the radar every now again. Best to let her work through it.”

It was true. Minako liked to surround herself with people, with sound and sensation, but she’d go radio quiet every once in a while, refusing contact with anyone. She’d hole up in her apartment and eat ice cream and watch crappy American television.

She couldn’t explain it. She was the leader of the Senshi and she liked people, generally enjoyed them, but she needed time apart from them. Maybe because she was so hyperaware of them, in sync with them, that she got overwhelmed.

“But I was asked to come check up on you.”

“Trust me, if I wasn’t okay everyone would know about,” Minako said, purposely not asking who had given Nephrite his check up on Minako duties. She had a feeling she didn’t want to know.

“Are you going to invite me in?” Nephrite wanted to know.

She eyed him. “Wasn’t planning on it.” He and Kunzite were built the most similar out of the Shitennou, but Nephrite was broader all around, a bruiser and a scrapper. Kunzite was pure, sleek power.

 _Ugh! Stop thinking about him_. After the pity party in the tub she had decided to take the coward’s way out and pretend it didn’t happen. Especially since the jerk wasn’t calling her.

She sighed. “Fine. Come in. Or whatever.” With a nudge of her foot the door swung wide and she made room for Nephrite’s wide, tall frame to step inside.

He eyed her less than impressive apartment, the hand-me-down furniture and the appliances that had seen better days, the tattered couch and chairs. Even her carpet looked like it had been chewed up and spit out.

“What?” she demanded, feeling defensive.

Nephrite shrugged. “It’s just… not what I expected.”

Yeah. She got that a lot. No one would ever guess that Minako’s fashion-forward outfits had come from a mismatched scavenger hunt through thrift shops and second-hand stores. She liked it that way.

“Believe it or not, being a glorified errand girl for a fashion rag doesn’t pay as well as one would think,” she muttered, kicking the edge of her couch with her toe, remembering with a groan that she had a first draft to turn in by the end of the week. She’d been distracted.

“Yeah,” Nephrite said, “but—you’re Sailor V! All those video games and merch. There was even a radio broadcast!”

Minako grinned at that. She and her girls had sat around and listened to it, booing whenever the bedroom voice Venus-wannabe spoke. “Well, it wasn’t like I could send an email _please forward all royalties to Minako Aino—who is totally not Sailor V.”_

Nephrite shook his head, a long, slow smile finally making its way across his mouth. When she had been Venus, and had seen those dark eyes flit across her across Mars across Mercury and met Jupiter’s, a banked spark of interest igniting them, Venus had had one thought and one thought only— _Jupiter doesn’t stand a chance_. Loud, stubborn Jupiter would have no idea how to contain and control this patient, collected man. She had been happy.

Was it any surprise it had happened again?

And maybe she was happy for Makoto now—maybe a little—because Makoto, out of all of them, had been the one who had yearned the most for that simply domesticity, and had been the one who felt like she would never have it.

Okay, Minako thought, _I don’t blame them. Any of them. I want my girls to be happy—and if this makes them happy…_ It was a big, momentous step and she wished someone other than Nephrite was there to celebrate it with her.

Maybe she wasn’t even mad at the Shitennou. They had fucked up. They had fucked up bad, but they knew it and they were working on it, trying to make amends. How many times had Mamoru gone off the deep end?

And Galaxia, shoving her hand into Minako’s heart, twisting her will into her own, making her attack Usagi, nearly kill Usagi, leaving Usagi to face her toughest battle alone. And what had Usagi done when her Senshi were returned to her? Embraced them with warm arms and laughing eyes.

Nephrite was watching her, his dark eyes always the keenest out of the Shitennou, always picking up the subtle undercurrents that flowed like electricity in a room. Jadeite had been the one gifted with foresight—but had been so much more cynical about it than Mars, her Blistering Lady of the Unrelenting Fires!—but it was Nephrite who entranced himself in the present, and saw.

“You were always a bit of a ball-buster,” he said. “When you set your eyes on Kunzite back in the day we all thought he deserved it.”

She spun, a sharp whip of gold and blue. “Hey! You make it sound like I’m the plague!”

“For a man like Kunzite, you were.”

She scowled at him, not liking the dip in this conversation. What was he talking about anyway? Back in the day she’d been the avatar of Love and Beauty, not just a self-titled goddess of it. After her initial stumbling in shock because Kunzite had been so handsome and it was the first time Venus had felt the inklings of actual attraction to someone, she had simply gone for it.

After all, no one had ever denied her what she wanted.

“He liked control, even more back then,” Nephrite said. He crossed the room to play with the chipped knick-knacks on her leaning, aged bookshelf. “And you refused to be put in any single place. You threw him through a ringer. It was the first I could honestly say I had seen Kunzite looked harried.”

But she had been thrown too. She had been the most beautiful woman in the entire galaxy—yes, even more beautiful than the Moon Queen and her daughter—and people had tripped over themselves to please her, leaving offerings of gold and gems and silks. They’d even used to try to sacrifice virgins to her before she’d put her foot down. But Kunzite? Kunzite had looked at her like he had a piece of meat lodged in his throat and he was choking on it. No matter how much she had dedicated herself to breaking down his walls, he had remained an impregnable fortress. She had been enthralled. The perfect cool to her warmth.

“Sounds like I was good for him,” Minako muttered sullenly.

Nephrite blinked in honest confusion. “I never said you weren’t. We just had no idea how much he really enjoyed it. Kunzite could put anyone he wanted down, on the battlefield and off, but you refused to back down. He didn’t know what to do with himself.”

“He figured it out.”

Namely, he figured out that all he had to do was put his hands on her or, hey, his mouth and she became a puddle of goo at his feet. Totally not her fault. The man had been a wizard with his tongue.

 _Was he still?_ the traitorous thought wondered.

“And you were always been upfront about what you wanted, and what you were willing to do to get it.”

Arguably, that was because Venus had confidence bolstered by a plethora of worshippers who told her everyday how beautiful and wonderful she was, but Nephrite wasn’t far off the mark. Minako was typically blunt, and she was willing to be as ruthless or charming as the situation called for.

“It’s not like you to lead a guy around,” Nephrite concluded, and Minako could swear she heard the axe drop.

 _What do you know?_ she almost demanded. _How do you know what I’m like? I’m not Venus! I’m Minako! We are not the same, not all the way._

Instead, she fisted a hand over her hip and eyed her room, trying to find something she wouldn’t mind parting with the lob at his head. “What did he tell you?”

Nephrite scowled. “Nothing. Except—if you upset her I’ll rip out your throat.” It wasn’t fair that the look he sent her made her feel guilty. She had nothing to feel guilty about! “But you’d do the same, if it was one of yours.”

Well, duh. But it was totally different.

_Liar, liar pants on fire!_

“It’s not as easy as all that,” she said. Which was true but at the same time—he had a point. She was a flirt, and she liked to tease, but she’d never been one to blow hot and cold at a guy. If she wanted him, he knew. If she didn’t, he knew that to. She reserved the right to change her mind about it at a later date, but she was purposely giving Kunzite enough room to wriggle but not wriggle free.

She clung to that betrayal, a protective shield around her heart. Forgiveness had never came easy to her. She took slights too personally, and no one had hurt quite like Kunzite had. He hadn’t just shredded her heart, he’d ripped apart her pride too. Venus had loved him, and for the first time someone hadn’t felt her love was enough.

“Kunzite had told me once that his greatest weakness was that he only gave his trust once, and never again.” She blinked passed a surprising cluster of water filming over her eyes. “Looks like we have that in common.”


	2. command me to be well

Minako didn’t like sitting around and moping. She didn’t have the best coping mechanisms for sadness, so she mostly just ignored it. Did something else. Did _someone_ else—though, thank you very much, she was mostly over the fuck away my feelings phase of her life because a) the sex had been lackluster and b) the feelings didn’t actually stay gone and they came back coupled with a deep sense of self-loathing.

She’d sworn off men before Kunzite had come back into her life less than a year ago. And she’d been doing swell, thanks for asking. Hadn’t even noticed their absence in her life. It was a good thing, too, since she was never going to get married. She was just going to play doting aunt to Chibiusa when the little brat came along and maybe buy a bunch of cats.

See? _Happy._

Of course, Kunzite had come back and her heart started doing these stubborn twinging like maybe it was willing to give everything a second chance—a reminder of what Kunzite’s sword had felt like plunged into her chest usually shut it up. Minako was very much her own woman, but she took the lesson imparted from Venus to heart.

She didn’t want to think about what Nephrite had told her, mostly because he was right. She was either going to have to cut Kunzite off completely, or find a way to mend that shattered bridge inside her. Each possibility was horrifying. _Be vulnerable like that again?_ Never. _Watch Kunzite move on from her?_ She wanted to be sick.

Her solution? Pretend like she wasn’t running headlong into a wall of hurt. Ignorance was pure, fucking bliss and she was going to lap it up until there was nothing left. Which meant finding something to occupy her time that wasn’t sitting around and thinking about Kunzite’s warm, soft mouth on her skin.

The problem was she and Rei were still on the outs, and she wasn’t sure how much Nephrite would tell Makato, and Usagi was absolutely useless in these sorts of situations because she got her _I’m a taken woman don’t breathe my air_ look on her face. All that was left was Ami.

That was just dandy, really. Ami was fine after a few drinks. Ami was a bit—read a lot—more reserved than the rest of the girls, but Minako had a unique talent in dragging inhibitions to the floor and stomping on them with her stilettos.

So Ami being the girl she dragged out was no problem except—

“Did you have to bring him?” she said, having to scream it over the pound of the music. American dubstep was not her usual style but she needed the rough, unmanaged speed of it tonight. She shot Ami’s companion a look. “No offense.”

Zoisite shrugged as if to say none taken. Probably for the best since she wouldn’t have been able to hear him anyway.

“Yes, well…” Ami trailed off, and downed another generous gulp of the electric blue cocktail Zoisite had ordered her. Zeke—short for Ezekiel, the poor man—Beauchene had apparently bartended to pay for the tuition of his American university and had taken it upon himself to introduce Ami to the wide range of drinks the world had to offer. For the best, Minako would admit, since Ami typically only drank bitch beer.

_“He doesn’t take advantage of you while your judgments are lowered, does he?”_

_“Of course not!” Ami had said, looking horrified. “In fact, we haven’t—not even when I—oh Minako, stop it!”_

_She’d been grinning from ear to ear while Zoisite pretended not to hear them just up ahead._

She didn’t recognize the song the DJ was playing, but she supposed it was probably entitled something with a lot of numbers and the word remix at the end. It was easy to keep up with, and that was all that mattered. Her stilettos tapped in time with the beat, and she took a preening pleasure in knowing every guy’s eyes had checked out her leather miniskirt and blood-red bustier—her breasts were small, but she knew how to make them work for her—when she had stripped out of her winter coat.

“It’s nothing personal,” she told Zoisite, “it’s just supposed to be girl’s night out.”

He held up his hands in mock surrender. “By all means, don’t let me stop you.”

She frowned at him, liking him despite herself. He’d always been the charming one. Nephrite too quiet, Jadeite too intense, Kunzite too—

 _Nope. We’re not thinking about him._ Because thinking about Kunzite inevitably led to remembering It. It being that unnamed night where she had let him bang her brains out in a garden courtyard.

God, what had she been thinking? No, never mind. Minako had always been the wildcard of the group. Sex in a public garden was probably not all that shocking. But what had Kunzite been _thinking_?

With a growl, she downed the last of her vodka and sprite. Would she never go a day without thinking about him? She didn’t moon over guys, no matter what long, tragic history they had.

Zoisite and Ami were watching her, and she didn’t like that either. She had a feeling that everyone had some inkling that something had gone down.

Well, no one had gone down per say.

“Let’s dance!” she said to Ami.

Ami looked horrified, wiggling into her seat like she was trying to disappear altogether. Ami had never been an extrovert. In fact, not many of her girls were into the tabletop dancing, though Rei could be challenged to do it. Usagi tripped over her own feet, Makoto ended up picking a fight, and Ami—well Ami looked like she rather be dead.

Zoisite shifted an inch closer, and Minako knew he was reaching under the table to lay a hand across her knee. So romantic. _Ugh. Kill me._

“Fine,” she said, confidence bolstered by alcohol, “I’ll go by myself. I need the boost.”

“Boost?” she heard Zoisite ask Ami as she spun away from the table.

Ami could explain it. It wasn’t like it was a secret.

She flagged down the DJ and then, using her most charming smile—which was super impressive and held the promise of darkened bedrooms and lush thousand-count sheets made with Egyptian cotton—convinced him to play a more familiar song. There was an elevated stage in the center of the dance floor, probably meant for the wet tee-shirt contests she had a feeling this club had every Thursday night, made of Plexiglas and steel frames, allowing the multicolored strobes lights inside it to make the stage jump from pink to blue to purple to green and back again.

The song started and so did she, a long roll of her hips that got everyone’s attention. Minako knew she what she looked like dancing. It was her element, and part of her inherent powers as the goddess of love and beauty.

It had taken her years to figure it out. It was something that she had been born with, but had laid dormant until she had hit puberty, and she still hadn’t gotten what it was about until years later.

But the goddess of love and beauty fed off pleasure, specifically of others. Their love, their happiness, their enjoyment, all of it was like a primer, a conduit that supercharged—and if it was sexual? The zing was just that much sharper. And she had discovered through various experiments that she could affect it too. Dancing like this, with eyes on her, made it that much more potent because she wasn’t just absorbing the general atmosphere. The sensations were targeted directly at her.

It was like a high, and if she had been in her Senshi uniform her powers would have been heightened to an nth degree. Enough of this, and she could probably flatten a city. Artemis had, embarrassingly, admitted that it had made sense. Fighting gave Rei a similar rush, because the two of them were attached to emotions rather than elements—like Ami or Makoto. Ami functioned better during the cold seasons, Makoto during a storm.

As the crowd hollered at her she flipped out her tangle of blonde hair, already slick with sweat. The crowd below her would attribute it to the flashing, colored lights but her powers were sprinkling over them like gold dust, heightening their pleasure even as they fed into her own.

This is what she needed, she decided, shimmying along the stage as she was cheered on by men and women. Not Kunzite. Certainly not. Just that feeling of being connected.

She rolled her hands down her hips, bending at her waist and snapping back. The lights burst in her eyes, blinding her, but the roar from the crowd told her it had been heartily approved. She smirked. _Good._

There was a pole at one end of the stage, which made her wonder what special events this dancing club hosted, and she briefly considered give the crowd a real show. But the last time she had done something like that she had caused a riot and while that had given Rei a surge of good vibes it had severely dampened Minako’s own high.

Batting hair out her eyes, she looked toward the back of the club where two of the only people not involved in her show sat. Ami looked mortified, but Minako didn’t take any real offense. Ami was mortified by most things. Zoisite was stuffing something back into his pocket, eyes huge, actually shocked, and she couldn’t blame him. This was 100% a Minako thing. Venus had never done it—Minako theorized it was because she had gotten a constant flow of good feelings from her worshippers.

With a constant influx of energy from her adoring crowd below, Minako didn’t tire. She could dance for hours, and with her power shimmering in the air, the crowd was enraptured, as captivated by her as she was by them. It wasn’t like it was a parasitic relationship. They fed her, and she fed them right back. Good vibrations all around.

Of course, it wasn’t long until a guy thought he had an open invitation up to her stage. She gave his forehead a solid kick with her heel, confirming that tonight’s entertain had no audience participation. The small show of violence didn’t dampen the mood, only heightened it, causing the crowd to sing more raucously for her.

She pivoted on her heel, skirt plastered to the curve of her ass, and wondered if she shouldn’t give the pole a try, after all. At the back of her mind she knew it was that that wayward thought was the intoxicating effect of the power she was absorbing, but it was muffled and losing footing. The energy of the crowd was winding down, fatigue edging into their minds. She must have been up on the stage longer than she thought.

Running a hand down her sides, she gave another impressive pirouette and thought— _of course._

Looked like Zoisite had blown the whistle, the jerk. Because Kunzite was in the room, in the corner with his friend and Ami. Their heads were bowed close, speaking to each other, while Ami sipped on her cocktail, looking both annoyed and guilty. It saved her from Minako’s wrath, since even her straight-laced friend wouldn’t have called Kunzite. Chicks before dicks.

Oh no. That was pure guy thought. _Wow, the little woman is acting up better call my buddy to come and collect her._

Well, fuck that. She shot Zoisite a glare, but it was Kunzite who turned his head. Their eyes locked, Minako’s warm and ringed with the golden hue of her power, his icy blue, and calm. He didn’t look annoyed, or angry, because of course Kunzite was a master of his emotions.

He also didn’t look jealous, even though she had an entire club’s worth of guys panting at her stage. Not that she was looking for a display of chest-thumping mucho man bullshit, but a _little_ emotion would have been nice from the guy she’d been climbing on top of only a handful of nights ago.

Turning back, he said something again to Zoisite, and approached the stage. Minako’s brow raised a haughty inch. He inclined his chin. Minako was a warrior, straight down to her core, and she knew a challenge when the gauntlet was thrown.

He turned a chair so its back was pushed against the the table closest to Minako’s stage, lowering into with indifference, legs spread and arms crossed.

 _Challenge accepted_ , she thought, pretending that wild lightning bolt of excitement down her spine wasn’t anything similar to what she had felt that night running from him.

She leapt from the stage, landing with catlike grace. The crowd went still, but only because it was eager to see what she was going to do. Her power was flowing off her in waves, all but making her skin glow underneath the light, and humans had an instinctive weariness of it. No one touched her as she approached him in a slow, meandering saunter. Probably for the best. The burst of energy they would have gotten from her would have knocked them flat.

Except one guy got confident when she was less than a foot away from Kunzite, reaching out to just the curl a finger around her hair. Kunzite’s foot lunged out and connected with the man’s knee, sending him face first into the floor.

That little spectacle earned him a feline smile and she dropped into his lap, lightly looping her arms around his shoulders. The crowd went quiet around them, not because they had lost interest but because they were reverted to see what would happen next, what she would do, what he would do.

Kunzite’s eyes were locked on the bead of sweat that trailed down over Minako’s throat, into the hollow above her breasts.

This public spectacle was something Kunzite would have never done before. He’d been a deeply private man, only touching her behind closed doors, and then pretending their relationship was strictly professional outside them. Of course, this wasn’t something Venus would have done either. As wild as she had been, she’d been tempered by a sense of propriety. This would have scandalized even here.

So this? This was something that was just them, who they were now. Not who they had been.

The music started up again, a low pound of bass, and she canted her hips forward, a swaying motion meant to mimic dance moves. His powerful hands framed her hips, keeping her steady as she rocked. Another low of hum of pleasure skittered along her skin from her audience and then something else, something sharp and bright, a diamond being pressed into her skin.

 _His pleasure?_ Minako’s eyes fluttered as she rolled over him, pulling at his hair, rocking in time to the beat. Yes, that was his pleasure feeding into her, like the crowd’s had moments ago. But if the crowd’s pleasure had been a low build up, drinking hard liquor through the course of the night, this was like a needle straight into her vein.

She groaned, biting down hard on her bottom lip. His thumbs pressed into the small of her back, until she worried he’d leave an indentation on her bones. She clasped one hand over his, using his arm to bend backward. He used his powerful thighs to lift her, bracing her as she curved backward far enough to brush her hair along the floor.

This was unlike anything she had ever felt before. No one had given her such a concentrated amount of power like this. If it hadn’t made her feel so amazing she might have felt annoyed that it all came from Kunzite.

With a snap, she came back up. He caught her before she knocked them both out of the chair. The icy blue of his eyes were electric, feeding more sensation into her as he disentangled one hand from her around her hip to trail after the line of sweat down the column of her throat.

Drunk on sensation, she leaned forward. It was an offering, her throat bared. Kunzite took it, dragging his tongue against the bead of sweat, lapping it up with a long drag of his tongue. The crowd cheered, but they were a dull background noise as she scooted closer on his lap. Now she could feel the persistent rub of his erection against her thigh. She grinded against it, and felt his groan vibrate through her.

 _Mine_ , she thought on a strange surge of possessiveness, _all mine_. Her free hand curled around his chin, forcing his face up to hers.

Her tongue felt fuzzy from the overwhelming sensations and energy coursing through her. She was a livewire, her skin glow-in-the-dark gold by this point. All because of him. _He_ was pleasured immensely, in a deeply personal way, and it was affecting her in much the same. The crowd had been distant, detached, strangers she knew nothing about and felt no connection to. She knew Kunzite intimately, and his pleasure was that much sharper.

Her fingers raked over his cheek. “ _Kunzite_ ,” she breathed. The problems that had seen so paramount only hours before had somehow ebbed away, sand through her fingertips, until the most important thing was being in his arms.

Abruptly, Kunzite stood. She would have fallen flat on her ass and ruined the image of siren seductress she had cultivated tonight if he hadn’t branded an arm around her waist to hold her against his body.

“Show’s over,” he said, voice low but even under the music the message was loud and clear. His carefully controlled lethality was more than enough to have the crowd dispersing.

Minako was placed back on her feet, teetering on her heels and unsteady legs, still too high on the energy to feel embarrassed.

That was okay, though. Ami looked embarrassed enough for the both of them. “Minako,” she whispered as Minako stumbled toward her. “Minako, I’m so sorry. I told Zoisite not to—”

“S’kay,” Minako slurred, all but collapsing into Ami’s thin arms with a giggle. “ _Aaaaaaaay-oooookay_.”

“Minako.” Ami looked supremely worried. Probably because she wasn’t the normal companion on these outings. No, that was normally Rei who just hailed a taxi to dump Minako at her crummy apartment, and then went looking for a fight.

Ami managed to bundle her up, adorably making Zoisite carry their purses. Little Ami could be bossy when she wanted to be, Minako thought, pleased. Venus had worried Zoisite’s charismatic personality would swallow Mercury’s much quieter one, but Mercury hadn’t seemed to mind it and hadn’t let him ever domineer her. Looked like Ami was taking that to heart.

“You guys,” she slurred, “you guys are my ride or die crew.”

“Is she alright?” Zoisite wanted to know as he ushered them out. It was a handy bit of foresight, since the crowds tended to get a little rambunctious once Minako’s power left their system.

Kunzite was a solid, silent presence behind them, watching their backs.

“I think so,” Ami said. “Rei said that she gets like this after—well, after that.”

“Is that a new thing?” Zoisite said, curiosity lacing his words. Minako, hunched into Ami’s arms, blinked up at him. His eyes were fastened on Ami. “Can you do something that?”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Ami said haughtily and well—no she couldn’t; her powers were attached to ice, not emotions, but Minako was too busy cheering her on to point that out.

Zoisite was mulishly silent.

“What’s his problem?” Minako demanded. She sent Zoisite a scowl. Hey, she might not have approved initially, but if Ami wanted her formerly traitorous Shitennou to jump her bones than the boy better get to work!

“Let’s go home,” Ami muttered.

Minako laughed and shoved away from Ami. She almost tripped backward, except knuckles pressed into her shoulder blades, keeping her on her feet. She didn’t turn around to look at Kunzite.

“No away, Jose!” she crowed. “The night is still young and so am I! I’m going to ride this wave until it crashes.”

Ami looked worried, and exchanged a look with Zoisite.

Minako knew exactly where those thoughts were heading. “ _Puh-leeze_ ,” she said. “I’m not going to jump the first mildly attractive guy I come across. I have more self-respect than that—and I grew out of that phase _ages_ ago.”

And, besides, the guy whose bones she was going to want to jump was standing stone silent behind her, all but breathing down her neck.

“Are you—” Zoisite glanced up and behind Minako. He nodded. “Alright.”

She waited on the sidewalk until Zoisite hailed a cab and bundled Ami inside. She gave them a gamey wave and finally turned back to the man whose lap she had been crawling all over less then fifteen minutes ago.

Her high was still going strong, his pleasure coursing through her veins like the sweetest drug. “Please go away,” she managed, her words only slightly smashed together.

Kunzite’s wing-tipped brows drew together. His slacks and button-down shirt were mussed, the top button at his collar popped and torn.

 _Oh. I did that,_ she thought.

Kunzite unfurled his fingers and held them out to her like an offering cup. “Come with me.”

There were plenty of reasons why she shouldn’t, Minako knew, but still riding the wave of the immense high he had given her she couldn’t think of them. So she slid her small hand into his and let him led her wherever he wanted to go.

 

 

 

 

It turned out, he wanted to go to his apartment.

For all the spying— _ugh! Not spying! Reconnaissance! And I stopped doing it like weeks ago_ —she had never gotten this close to his apartment. The loft was made of rich wood and stainless steel appliances, far nicer than anything she had ever lived in. A year’s pay check probably couldn’t pay for a month in this apartment.

She paused in the threshold of the door. Kunzite gave her arm a tug.

“What?” he asked, turning to pin her with a look.

“It’s just—uh—like I mean I knew you were rich. But you’re _rich rich_. Like Kardashian rich.”

He frowned. Maybe he didn’t know who the Kardashians were, which seemed illogical. She’d figured anyone in America for longer than five minutes would know who the Kardashians were. She’d have to fix that.

Carefully, she toed off her shoes so she didn’t scoff his expensive floors, dropping a full seven inches. Kunzite, even from a distance, towered over her. She had never felt intimated by his height, just sort of hyperaware of how much bigger than her he was and, in some ways, how much stronger.

“I mean, I heard about the Wall Street thing or whatever and I knew you were like good at it but you’re good at everything and I just didn’t consider,” she paused, glancing up at the glass ceiling of his apartment, “what all that meant. Do you—do you have a private island?”

“No.”

“Oh. Good.” She considered it. “How about a private jet?”

“No. But the brokerage firm I work for does and I can, for the most part, use it whenever I want.”

She frowned. “That doesn’t help.”

“I do own a house in Spain, on the Rivera.”

“Continues to not help,” she said, clapping her hands over ears. She scooting around him and into the darkened loft, bare feet padding over cool wood. “I’m lucky I can afford cab fare.”

She turned. He was watching her move through the darkness, eyes locked on where her bustier dipped into her cleavage. The muscles in her stomach clenched. _Oh boy._

“I think,” she began, “I think you should definitely take off your shirt now.”

Actually, the more she thought about it the better the idea became. Yes. Naked skin. Specifically his. Another amazing orgasm. She had been starving for them, for him, and with her eyes still aglow with the power she had absorbed tonight and her fingertips tingling there was no reason not to. Regrets were for the morning.

She sidled up to him. Kunzite took a step back. She took one forward. He took a step back. For all she had chased him in the Silver Millennium, she had never really chased him. Kunzite would have never allowed himself to be chased. The fact that she was crowding him right to a corner was its own thrill, and she felt a zing of answering pleasure from him.

 _Oh. Big bad general likes aggressive women, does he?_ That was very good. Minako got pretty aggressive.

His back hit his door, and she eased herself up onto her toes. “Kunzite,” she said very seriously, pressing her fingers to his sides, encased in the silk of his shirt. “I want you to take off your shirt. Then your pants. Then your boxers if you’re wearing them. And then I want climb on top of you.”

He swallowed visibly. She found herself fascinated by the bob of his Adam’s apple and stood on her tiptoe to suck at it. He tensed beneath her. He’d been half-hard the entire trip to his apartment, as effected by her powers as she was, and now he was at full attention, thick and hard against her stomach. She moaned headily.

“Wait,” he started.

“No. No.” She pressed her lips to the underside of his chin and suckled. “I definitely don’t want to wait.”

“You’re too—you’re power-drunk,” he accused her.

She laughed. “Yes. It’s wonderful. Let’s take advantage of it.” Before it wore off and she started thinking again, and she remembered why this was a bad idea.

“Advantage. Exactly.” He gripped her shoulders when she tried to wiggle up his chest. “No. I’m not going to—this isn’t going to be another thing you to stew over and regret. The other night was different. We both knew what we were doing. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Kiss me.”

But he was as stubborn as an ox. “No. I’m not going to touch you until you’re in complete control of your facilities.”

“Ugh.” She sagged against him, head bumping against his chest. “I’m not ever going to say yes when I’m in complete control of my facilities.”

“Then we don’t ever have sex.”

It was such a miserable thought, and she was definitely sobering now. Exhaustion crept up from the bottom of her feet, ruminating at her knees. She felt tired and sad and old all at once, and nuzzled her nose against his silk shirt. He smelled like coffee and desert sands and crisp nights. She yearned for him, the heart she had lashed to the walls of her chest straining to break loose.

“I’m a mess,” she sniffled.

“I know.”

She punched him lightly. “You’re not supposed to agree with me, jerk.” But he didn’t say it with any sort of pity, any sort of inflection really. Just stating facts. Venus had always been messy, underneath it all. She was the essence of love, and real love was never simple or clean—she had told him that once, laying naked in his bed while he drew a map of the earth on her hip.

Thinking about Venus made bile rise up in the back of her throat, tasting like blood.

“I can’t—I can’t—” Her words were lost under hiccups.

Kunzite curled an arm around her shoulder, and then another at the backs of her knees. She went gratefully, looping her arms around his neck as she lifted her as if she weighed nothing more than a feather. Kunzite had always been strong; she’d always loved that about him.

She didn’t remember him walking her to the little side room that housed his bed. It was Western, and large, swallowing up most of the space. He eased her onto the mattress and she all but sunk into the luxurious give of it.

“You’re not staying?” she murmured drowsily, curling onto her side. Her eyes were already drifting close.

His warm fingertips brushed aside the hair curled over her forehead. “No.”

“You’re a really good guy, you know that?” In the darkness of the room he wasn’t anything more than a silhouette outlined in silvery moonlight. “I mean, not Kunzite. You.”

He stilled, and his hand retreated. “Goodnight.”

Minako didn’t answer. She was already drifting into sweet oblivion.

 

 

 

 

Minako woke with an unsurprising pounding headache. It happened, depending on how much power she foisted the night before. Just like coming down from a high or an intense buzz.

She thrust a hand through her tangled hair, trying to remember how she got into this strange bed. And—thank God—her panties were still on. Not that she normally picked up men, not even riding the wave of pleasure and arousal, but still. It was a relief.

 _Kunzite’s bed_ , she thought, unable to resist rolling back onto her side and dragging a pillow against her face. It smelled like him. The sheets she was cocooned in were impossibly soft—probably like a thousand thread count or something, nothing but the best for Mr. Filthy Rich—and she allowed herself the pleasure of lounging in them.

The ensuite bathroom was her saving grace from embarrassment. She hustled inside and winced at her reflection in the mirror. She looked like she’d gone toe-to-toe with a tempest, and the tempest had won. Hair stuck every which way, matted with sweat, her eyeliner and mascara smeared and running, her cherry-red lipstick now traveling from one corner of her chin to the other.

“Ugh,” she said to her reflection, and scrubbed her face squeaky clean. At least now she only looked tired.

After a moment of consideration she borrowed Kunzite’s toothpaste as well, slathering it onto her fingertip and scrubbing at her teeth until she felt more human than swamp creature.

Her club gear was still in relatively decent shape, but it didn’t make her feel sexy anymore. Like that guy you take home that you thought had clocked in at a 10 but in broad daylight was actually only a 6.

She peeled it from her aching torso, leaving it in a heap in Kunzite’s bathroom. Everything she had seen of him so far said Kunzite was still very much a neat freak and would probably be horrified to see her gear strewn across the floor, but oh well.

Thankfully, Kunzite’s shirts went well passed her butt so she didn’t seem the harm in trading in for one. She tried to pick the least expensive looking one from his closest, except they all looked expensive enough to make her teeth ache.

“Alright. Put on your big girl panties, Minako. Time to face the piper.” She frowned. “That’s not how that saying goes.”

The glass ceiling filtering in bright, harsh morning light into the loft, making Minako’s head pound even harder.

Kunzite sat at his pristinely white kitchen table, tapping his fingers against the marble top. His back was too her, and finally he’d taken off his shirt. Since the next few moments of her life were going to be painfully embarrassing she allowed herself the pleasure of drinking in his strong, muscled back.

He had a tattoo, from one corner of his shoulder to the other, a series of black interlocking chains. The lines were thick, bold, and drawn in with a skilled hand. The shading and shadows made the tattooed chains look like he’d had real, metal links stapled into his flesh. Letters had been inked between each link.

“ _Fortius quo fidelius_ ,” she read, recognizing the Latin but unable to translate it. She had an idea what it meant though.

“Yes,” Kunzite was saying into his phone, “all my meetings for the week.” He paused. “They’ll do fine without me. I have every confidence in them.”

She smiled at his tone. He might as well have been ordering soldiers through their drills. No matter what incarnation, Kunzite was meant to be a leader. A general.

His shoulder stiffened when her feet padded across the wooden floor, making the chain across his shoulders tremble, but he didn’t turn to acknowledge her, still talking into his phone. His life had to be in New York still, Minako realized, wondering how much he had given up to come with Mamoru back to Tokyo.

“I’ll still have my phone on me,” he said. “If there’s a problem just—” Minako touched the left edge of the chain, and he drew in a barely perceptible breath, “—just call me if there’s a problem.”

He hung up, but didn’t turn. Minako tapped his tattoo with one finger.

“This is new,” she said. “You didn’t have back—back then.”

“Have you ever been to New Orleans?” Kunzite asked.

“I’ve only ever been to London and Tokyo,” she admitted. She knew Kunzite had been all over. Born in Dubai, raised in Spain, educated in America.

“Well, they celebrate something called Mardi Gras there,” he explained. “Mamoru and the guys and I decided to check it out and after five solid hours of drinking and getting lost in the French Quarter cheap tattoos on Bourdon Street sound like a great idea.”

It was so unlike Kunzite. She tried to imagine him a) drunk and b) drunk enough to agree to let someone come at him with a needle.

“I can’t see it,” she admitted.

He laughed. “I have a high tolerance, but that night I was stumbling down the street letting Nathan lead us.” He pitched his voice an octave lower than his normal tone. “ _I’m a natural born citizen. I have inbred sense of direction in American cities._ Boy had grown up on a farm in Dakota.” He reached back and rubbed along his tattoo. “I don’t even remember getting it.”

She dragged her fingers along his shoulders, tracing the bumpy outline of the tattoo. “Do you miss it? The life you had?”

“Do you?” he challenged.

Minako shook her head even though he couldn’t see it. “I was a Senshi since I was fourteen. This has always been my life.” Even before then, it just felt like she was waiting for something. Waiting for Artemis, it had turned out. “I don’t know who I am if I’m not Sailor Venus but—” She worried her bottom lip. “—but sometimes I do wonder. What it would be like to just be Minako.”

Kunzite turned then, the feet of his chair scrapping across the floor. She watched his eyes darken as he took her in, clad in nothing but his shirt, her hair loose and trailing down to her back. His hand reached out to skim her knee and when she didn’t immediately back away, he curled a hand around her thigh.

“We should talk about last night,” he said.

“We should,” Minako agreed, though she wished for anything but. “I’m—I’m sorry. I told you—I’m a mess. Rei says I can’t kept a single thought in my head longer for fifteen minutes. She’s right usually. And I know—I know I’m not being fair. You don’t deserve—I owe you some sort of—”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Kunzite said thickly.

“Then I owe it to myself,” she said. “Neither of us should have to hang around in limbo because I can’t man up and commit to one thing or the other. I have to decide.”

“What have you decided?”

“Mostly that I don’t want to decide,” she admitted sheepishly. “Why do I have to have everything all packaged and neat? I’m only twenty-four, shouldn’t I be allowed to be unsure, to not know what I want?” It was wretched out of her before she could stop herself, hands falling to his powerful shoulders. “I don’t know if I can forgive you.”

“Forgiveness has never been our strong suit,” Kunzite agreed.

“But I want to forgive you!” she said, and his fingers tightened over. “I know you’re sorry, and I know that you were—were tricked—but—but I don’t know if I can. If it’s in my make-up. There’s so much hurt there. You don’t understand.”

_Your love will be doomed for eternity._

Maybe not because no one could love her, but because she would never be able to love them back. Wasn’t that Venus what had sworn to herself, laying in her own pool of blood, knowing her Princess, and her friends and family, would be dead soon, too? _Never again. I will never fail like this again._

Bleeding to death in that open field, unable to force her limbs to move. A complete and utter failure at the one task she had dedicated her life to.

Pain knifed through her, pain and grief and guilt. She curled her fingers tight on his shoulders. “I don’t want to think about it right now,” she said. “Last night you wouldn’t kiss me because—you were right—I was thinking clearly. But guess what. My brain is perfectly aligned, and I still want to kiss you. Will you kiss me?”

He pushed himself from the chair, towering over her, hands sliding up legs and under her shirt, lifting her.

“Even though I might not ever forgive you?”

“I’ll take you anyway I can get you,” Kunzite said.

She wrapped her arms around his neck as she came off her toes, hooking her legs around his lean hips. “Kunzite—”

“Kadir,” he murmured.

It took her a moment to process it, eyes fastened on his mouth. “What?”

“Will you call me Kadir?”

Kadir. The boy born in Dubai, the man who stumbled down Bourdon Street with his friends, the man too drunk to remember getting his tattoo. The man who had shown no shame as she crawled into his lap at the club. The man whose pleasure had arrowed into her until she felt like she could level an entire country with her power.

Kadir, who was Kunzite, but also—was not Kunzite.

“Kadir,” she said, barely managing to get the name out before his mouth swooped down and claimed hers. She moaned, eagerly opening her mouth to his greedy tongue, urging it passed her lips so she could suckle it.

He carried them across the room, bumping one leg into his couch, cursing. She laughed into his mouth but refused to release her vise grip on his neck and hips. He swatted at her backside in reprisal, but that only made her shiver in anticipation.

They sunk back onto his unmade bed, Kunzi—Kadir’s mouth trailing over her face, forehead and nose and cheeks and the corners of her mouth. She giggled, the tightness she felt like she had carried around in her chest since time immemorial finally, finally, easing.

His mouth coasted down her knee, the soft fabric of his sweatpants brushing against the thighs she had widened to cradle him. He tugged at the collar of her borrowed shirt and then, when it didn’t give, yanked until the buttons popped. More giggles from her that quickly turned into thick moans as he palmed her breasts, kneading them in measured tugs.

Minako bucked without warning, flipping them until she was on top. Kadir watched hungrily as she pulled the tattered remains of the shirt over her head, sending it to the floor with a plop. She bent over, returning his kisses, suckling at his neck. His fingers roved over the flesh of her back, up her spine.

Her hand trailed down, tugging at the waistline of his sweatpants. She was more than ready to get this party started, primed for it since that night in the courtyard. She slipped her hands passed the elastic and cupped him, so thick and full, and pressed a smile to his chest as he bucked beneath her.

“Let’s get this off,” she murmured huskily to him.

“Wait.” He caught her wrist, and dragged it upward.

“Stop telling me to wait!” she growled, but he was shaking his head.

“I want to—” He curled his fingers around her hips, tugging her upward. “I need to taste you.”

 _Oh_. Her legs trembled as she scooted up his body. It had taken her while as Venus to warm Kunzite up to the idea of, but he had proceeded afterward with unflagging enthusiasm. It was nice to know that Kadir started out ready, able, and willing to go down.

She trembled as his fingers parted her saturated folds, puffing cool air on her overheated flesh. She cried out, and then clamped down on her lips to stifle the noise.

“None of that,” Kadir murmured. “I want to hear you scream.”

He eased her over him the rest of the way, until her knees framed either side of his face. Minako sucked in one shaking breath, and he brought her down onto his open mouth.

She cried out again, rocking forward to grip the headboard. Kadir’s tongue swiveled through her folds, unabashedly drinking up her slick juices, hands gripping her sides with bruising force to keep her in place. The taste of her on his tongue caused him to moan and it reverberated up her entire body and back down again, centering in her aching clit.

“Oh, God. Oh God,” she hissed out, rocking over his mouth. “Kadir—Kadir please.”

But he seemed determined to take his time, lapping her up with careful, measured flicks of his tongue. He had to know she needed it rougher, faster, harder, but he refused to relent his slow, meandering pace.

 _Pay back for the lap dance_ , Minako realized.

One of his powerful hand came around to pluck lightly at her clit, finally earning a scream from her. Her reward was his tongue slipping inside her. She screamed again and again and each time his tongue moved inside her, giving her what she wanted.

At last, he pressed his tongue up against her clit and then lightly clamped down with his teeth. She screamed and bucked over him, almost falling to the wayside as she spasmed. He held her against him, mouth open, drinking in her orgasm.

“I—I— _oooooooh_.” She tried to form coherent words, but had none. She could only mumble her appreciation as Kadir sat up, could only slide her arms around his neck again as he flipped them. She would have liked to remain on top, but her legs were jelly anyway, and she probably wouldn’t have been able to remain there.

Kadir kissed her, tongue slipping back into her mouth, and she tasted the spicy tang of her arousal. She wriggled against him helplessly, clawing at his sides. Her muscles were still clenched and sensitive from her orgasm, but she needed more. She wanted more. She needed, and wanted, him inside her.

He understood, easing her legs over his hips and locking her ankles at the small of her back. Funny, but he hadn’t felt so big in the courtyard, but her entire body was oversensitive from pleasure. She panted heavily against his shoulder as he rubbed the head of his cock along her slippery folds.

“We—we didn’t,” she swallowed passed a lump of pleasure, “we didn’t use a condom in the garden but do you—?”

He nodded, leaning over the side of the bed to his nightstand. He rooted around in the drawer and until he fished out the tinfoil package. Magnum XL. And he wasn’t exaggerating.

“I’ll do that next time,” she told him, hungrily watching as he encased himself in the sheath. “But I can’t feel my arms at the moment.”

Kadir laughed, a thick, rumbling sound that made her toes curl. Then he leaned over her again, kissing her so gently she sighed, as below he adjusted himself. He broke away from her mouth with a rough grasp and tentatively pushed inside her.

Minako had closed her eyes when the crown of his cock had pressed into her entrance, but now she forced them open, drunk on the sight of him watching as his eased himself into her. There was such wild emotion in that icy blue gaze, such longing, it felt like something inside her was snapping.

Then he was buried to the hilt.

“Oh God.” She bowed back, the sensation of being filled almost beyond pleasure. She gripped the bed sheets for balance.

Confident that she could take him, Kadir raised up on his knees. “I need you to come for me again,” he told her. “I want to feel it.”

He was absolutely insane. She’d been wrung out and hung to dry after his mouth. She scrubbed a hand down her face, laughing wildly. “Oh, no. No. No. It’s not happening. I can’t. I definitely _cannot_.”

Another nudge and he brought her closer, lifting her by her pelvis off the bed. His free hand smoothed over the jutting hip bone just above her mound. “You can. I can prove it,” he assured her.

His fingers dipped down, back into her aching, throbbing folds and to the bundle of nerves at the hood of her sex. She thrashed wildly as he rubbed his heel lightly against her clit. Impossible. But he was right. She was gearing up for a second orgasm and he hadn’t even moved.

“Kadir. You. Are. Insane.” And two could play that game. She rocked her hips over his cock, managing to slide up and down his slippery shaft, and was reward with a hiss. “And I swear to God I’m going to deny you an orgasm for hours when it’s my turn.”

He only grinned, and it was another arrow into her heart.

With one hand rubbing her mound, the other clasped her side and eased her over his length. She hissed at the bite of pain mixed in with all the pleasure. It felt so good. Kadir kept moving her until he’d all but popped free of her, and then he slammed himself to the hilt.

Minako howled, clamping her legs around hips. He was relentless, driving into her over and over again, all the while keeping that one hand on her clit and pinching it in time with his thrust, never allowing her to move beyond her own pleasure.

This time, when her orgasm ripped throat her, she reared upward and clamped her teeth over his shoulder in revenge. Kadir grunted, hips slamming so hard against hers she could feel her bones rattling. Her inner muscles clamped tightly over him, milking him, and he plowed roughly into her, over and over again, until he buried his head in her hair and went dead still.

When it was over, Minako could only find three words. “Oh my God.”

Kadir shifted, mouth moving her sweaty shoulder. She felt his smile.

“Oh don’t say,” she muttered, already hearing the words. _Thanks, but you can call me Kadir._ She had walked right into that one.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” he assured her.

 

 

 

 

Minako decided she could happily spend the rest of her life in Kadir’s bed. Or, at least, a chunk of it. She shamelessly called out sick for work, lying through her teeth about having strep throat, and then let Kadir drag her into the shower to clean up.

She had no idea a loofah could be used that way and when they crawled out of the shower to scavenge something for food she felt dirtier than when they had started.

He found the scar the next time they rolled into bed, with the afternoon sunlight steaming over the sheets. His wide palm had pushed her right breast upward and there, a tiny, jagged white scar. He knew what it was instantly, a low, animal sound escaping him.

Her instinctive action was to cover it, place a hand over it until it was obscured from his gaze—as if it wasn’t his fault it was there in the first place. She didn’t want him looking at it, as if he’d remember how utterly weak Venus had been at the very end. Something slick and slimy crawled up her throat. Something like shame.

“I’m so—”

“Don’t,” she quickly. She didn’t want to hear an apology for it. And stranger still, there was no anger at her boiling in her belly. There only that lead ball of dread that it existed. _Weak. So weak._ Venus should have been able to stop him. She swallowed a lump at the back of her throat. _I should have never—_

Kadir rubbed his chin along her breast, but said nothing. Minako wondered if he was upset, if he felt the same sort of shame she did when he looked at the scar. Regret twisted inside her, but that made no sense. It was his fault the scar was there in the first place. Why should she worry about what he was feeling? Feel regret about not allowing him to apologize? It didn’t matter what he said, after all. She hadn’t forgive him.

The unease persisted, the kind that you felt when you lied about something fundamental, half expecting someone to leap from the shadows pointing an accusing finger. Her hands had risen, unbidden, to stroke soothingly through his hair. “It’s okay,” she said softly, “it doesn’t hurt.” No. It didn’t. All it was, was a birth mark, a weight she would also carrying—a mark of Venus’s failure.

Kadir spent the next two hours kissing the scar, over and over again, like he wanted to erase it. Minako half wished he’d succeed.

She learned that Kadir liked being tied down. He was so in control in the other parts of his life, he got a thrill when Minako wrenched the reigns from him. When night had settled she had tied him to his bed with his Aramani ties and made good on her threat that she’d make him go hours without an orgasm. Of course, he could have freed himself at any moment with his superhuman strength. The fact that he didn’t was telling.

Later Minako lay across his lap, fingers drawing lazy designed over his softening cock. It may have taken hours but she had made sure he’d gotten the same kind of orgasm he’d given hers. Minako was all about fair is fair.

“Tell me about Dubai,” she said.

So he did. His memories of it were distorted, a child’s memories, lush and ripe with sensations rather than clear recollections. He had clearer memories of Spain, and told her about that too, spending his summers on the Rivera. His mother had been almost like royalty or something, and there had been trips to Venice and Rome and Milan and Paris. Places Minako had never imagined she’d go.

He told her about America, too. The sudden tug nearly five years ago. He’d already had his MBA—he’d graduated early—but had decided to go back to school since he had the time and the money.

“What did you major in?” Minako asked.

“Art history,” he replied in all seriousness and made her crack up.

That tug five years ago had coincided with when Mamoru’s stones—not _stones_ stones, Minako thought, cackling at her own humor—housing the fragmented souls of his Shitennou goig still and dead. Mamoru had suffered that all alone, unwilling to expose Usagi or her Senshi to the men they had only ever known as enemies.

Venus had never given a damn about Endymion. She might have even killed him if she had known what his romance with Serenity would lead to, and Minako had to live with that. She loved Mamoru, and not just because Usagi did.

Mamoru had thought his generals were gone, the men he remembered as friends rather than enemies lost to him, at long last laid to rest, and he had tried not to selfishly wish them back. But they hadn’t left. They’d simply gone back to the reincarnations they belonged to.

“I saw him first across campus,” Kadir said. “And it was like—something clicked. A light turning on, and the memories just poured in.”

Minako nodded, hair brushing across his legs. She could understand that. She had had most of her memories in place by the time she had met up with Usagi and the other girls in Tokyo but seeing them at long last, touching Usagi, it felt like everything was finally _right_.

For four years Mamoru had kept the Shitennou a secret, not out of greediness but because he had, rightfully, assumed it would have caused an all-out war. They’d been still raw about what had happened with Galaxia and would have destroyed enemies first and asked questions later.

“Did you think about me?” she asked absently. She turned her head to drag her mouth across his thigh. The more—er—intense memories of Kunzite hadn’t come to Minako until she was older, but she’d always been aware of him, a pressure at the base of her skull.

“Yes,” he said. “All the time. I told myself that when we did go to Tokyo—we always knew we would—that I would stay away from you. That were was no way you’d forgive me.”

She was silent because, of course, she still hadn’t forgiven him. Hadn’t returned any of that trust he had burned to ashes on the Moon.

His fingers trailed through her hair. “But then I saw you,” he said quietly, “I knew that I couldn’t. That I’d wait for you forever if I have to.”

Minako crawled up his body, kissing each expanse of skin she coasted over. “Kadir,” she said very quietly, and sunk into his mouth.

Kadir groaned softly beneath her, hips gyrating. They had ordered take out and gorged on it, but Minako was still exhausted from bouts from crazy sex, and pulled away when she felt his fingers probe her sore entrance.

“Oh, no,” she said, breaking away. “I’m not going to be able to walk straight as it is. There is no way I’m having another go. Ten orgasm in less than twenty-four hours? We’ve got to be close to breaking some sort of record.”

“Go big, or go home,” Kadir told her, and set about convincing her to give it the old college try.

 

 

 

 

_Venus does’t see Jadeite until he’s at her side, plunging his dagger between her ribs. Her focus had been on Nephrite, who’d always been the one to lead the frontline charge._

_“Damn.” She swings out her chain, and it wraps its spike points around his throat. Jadeite pushes the dagger in deeper. She’ll bleed out long before she managed to strangle him, Venus knows._

_Fire ignites between them, and Venus’s nose fills with the putrid smell of burning hair and flesh. Jadeite’s scream of agony nearly bursts an eardrum as the dagger dropped away from her, blood already pouring slick and hot down her side. She doesn’t bother trying to staunch the wound. She doesn’t intend to leave this battlefield alive._

_She dares allow herself a split second to cast her gaze up at Mars, regret piercing her as painfully as the dagger. Venus had put Mars on the hill for damage control, yes, but another part of it had been to protect her. This is all Venus’s fault, after all. Blinded by love, when she should have seen the betrayal._

_Nephrite finally charges and she ducks under his sweep. Nephrite is faster than his size would make one assume, but it still works against him. She plants a fist into his abdomen as she comes down into a crouch. Now where’s Zoisite—_

_Behind her. The flat of his palm cracks against Venus’s skull, sending her sprawling into the dirt. She’s already flipping to her feet, spinning to dodge Nephrite meaty fist._

_Another shot of fire protects her from Zoisite’s sword thrust. They aren’t being as cautious as they had been as they had slowly decimated the moon, making their way to the palace. They’re enraged, unable to grieve Jadeite’s death but determined to extract revenge for it._

_Venus smirks. Good._

_An arm closes over her throat, lifting her. Fuck. Kunzite. Mars lays down a series of fireballs in an attempt to get Kunzite to release her, but he simply spins them both free of it, still throttling her._

_“Ah, Venus,” Kunzite murmurs into her hair, “remember the last time I held you in my arms like this?”_

_Bastard. She thrusts a hand upward, fingers straight, and plows them right into his eye sockets. She would have gorged them out if he didn’t released with her a curse._

_She crouches into a low fighting stance. “And you’re too slow, old man. Not surprising,” she angles her chin, smiling despite her bloody lip, “since you couldn’t keep up with me in bed, either.”_

_Whatever darkness gives them their unnatural strength, she’s still Venus, Princess of Magellan Castle, Goddess of Love and Beauty, Leader of the Senshi, and the best fighter the Moon has ever seen. She’s stronger than they could ever hope to be._

_Without breaking eye contact with Kunzite, she sweeps her leg out, tripping Zoisite as he charges. She back-flips, untangled her chain as she goes, and shoots it out as she lands. It curls around Nephrite’s throat like a snake._

_“Don’t you dare—” That commanding tone had made her shiver in bed only nights ago. The thought sends a burst of rage through Venus’s veins, powering her._

_“I’ll make sure Jupiter receives your regards,” Venus assures the giant of a man and yanks the chain. There’s a satisfying snap as Nephrite’s neck whips to the side._

_Another fireball causes Zoisite to leap backward. Unafraid of Mars’s fire Venus leaps through the wall of flame, crouched in midair. She plants her feet on the man’s chest, driving him to his back. Zoisite curses and throws out a hand for Kunzite to remain back. Any closer and Mars’ll have a clear shot of the Shitennou leader._

_Venus and Zoisite land only feet away from the Holy Sword, knocked out of her grip in the beginning of the fight to her eternal shame. Zoisite and she meet eyes, both knowing they had a split second to come out on top—loser died._

_Venus pivots right as Zoisite scrambles to his feet and shoots after her. His deadly spiked knuckles sliced across her calf and she nearly bows in pain as it cuts through tendon and muscle. But with a last, pained lunge her fingers close around the hilt of the Holy Sword._

_She spins, swinging the blade in an arch. Off goes Zoisite’s head, blood and gristle splattering across her fuku._

_Only one left._

_Kunzite charges, and this time his rage is his ally. It doesn’t blind him like it had the other two, and his fist plows into her cheek, shattering bone and sending her stumbling back. Pain bursts white-hot behind her eyes, blinding her, as she lifts the Holy Sword in defense of her face._

_No. Damnit! She scrambles back, barely missing having her torso severed in half by Kunzite’s own sword._

_“Mars!” she thunders. “Mars! Go!” She ducks another swing, still bellowing. “Tell them the generals are dead!” Neither she nor Kunzite will be leaving this battlefield, she decides. Without the Shitennou there might be a chance to push these forces of darkness back._

_A wild, inhuman laugh from Kunzite. Was the man she had loved, laid with, still in there? Had he ever been? Or had everything just been a dark illusion?_

_“So confident in yourself, Venus,” he spits, blood flecking over his lips. “You were the distraction for the generals, weren’t you? Did you ever stop to think that the generals were a distraction for the Senshi?”_

_She stills. No. No!_

_“Even now Beryl and Queen Metalia stalk to the Moon Palace. It doesn’t matter that you left two behind. Without all the Senshi you will be slaughtered and trampled!” His fingers flex over his sword. “It doesn’t matter that you killed us on this battlefield. We will be revived, and then we will crucify your princess on her own palace.”_

_“Mars!”_

_But instead of rushing to warn the palace, Mars takes a running leap and starts racing across the distance to Venus. She’s heard everything. There’s no point now, in running to the Moon Palace. Kunzite’s right. Jupiter and Mercury are strong, but they stand no chance against the darkness that has given the Shitennou their inhuman strength. Even all of them together, they would have barely stood a chance._

_All there’s left, now, is revenge._

_“No!”_

_Kunzite has anticipated Mars’s move and moves as quickly as the wind, scooping her up in his arms as she skids to a halt in mid-run, trying to backpedal to dodge him. It’s too late. He holds her close to his chest like a lover, gloved hand curling around her neck._

_“No!” Venus shrieks, rushing toward them. She doesn’t realize she’s crying until hot tears scald her battered face. “No, Kunzite, please!”_

_With the same, secretive smile that had once sent her heart pitter-pattering Kunzite pulls Mars’s neck to the right until, even feet away, Venus hears the sickening pop._

 

 

 

 

In the throes of the nightmare, Minako screamed. And screamed. Terror clawed at her throat, threatened to punch free of her stomach, as she thrashed. She couldn’t get loose of the memories. Venus’s grief, her rage, and her hate. _Mars. Oh Mars._

It was impossible not to remember Mars’s demise and not think of Rei, Rei fighting and dying and Minako being unable to reach her time, unable to save her. Venus’s grief tangled up with Minako’s horror. _I let him in, I was weak, I should have saved her, I should have saved them all, how could I have—_

Hands on her shoulders, shaking her. “Wake up! Goddamnit, wake up!”

She did with a wet, agonized gasp. Kadir’s face hovered above hers—no, Kunzite’s. Venus’s memories swallowed up her own, overtaking her, until she felt Minako recede in horror under to stem the tide of pain and horror. She shrieked and threw out her arms, rolling away from him.

Kunzite reached for her again and she rolled away.

“ _Don’t touch me_!” She kept rolling until she was off the bed, landing hard on her knees, and sucking in gulps of air.

“We share dreams sometimes. The night in the courtyard. I had the same dream as you,” Kunzite said very quietly from the bed.

“Then you know what I—”

“Yes.”

Oh God. How could she forget? Everything he had done. The Moon and Endymion and Mars. His betrayal, the sound of Mars’s neck snapping, her look of horror as she realized that she would die. Being unable to save them. How badly Venus had failed in her duty.

She was naked, her breasts and her thighs and neck covered in his teeth marks, proof that she had given her body to him. She had betrayed everything she had stood for, everything Venus had sworn to herself dying on the damned battlefield.

A traitorous whisper tried to remind her that the Shitennou had been used, badly. That much of their actions on the Moon had not been their own, poisoned by Beryl who had been poisoned by Metalia.

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter! He had let that darkness in, they all had, and the Moon had suffered for it. A moment of weakness had cost her everything. She had died for it.

Never again.

She leap to her feet, racing the bathroom to grab at her clothes still left there from almost two nights ago. _Two nights!_ She shoved on her shirt, her bustier without bothering to lace it up, and pushed on her stilettos.

Kunzite was waiting for her in the bedroom, standing gloriously naked by the window and looking at her with that quiet, fierce determination.

“Don’t,” she hissed when he opened his mouth. “Just don’t. I told you that I couldn’t—I said I couldn’t forgive you.”

She felt like sobbing, like throwing up, going into his arms and burying herself there until all the sadness went away and she could pretend it was all just a nightmare and not memories of what he had done to her.

“Please,” Kunzite said, and almost broke her.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t. We don’t forgive, remember? Isn’t your fault. I know it isn’t. At least, not now. I know Mamoru’s forgiven you and Usagi and I know that they want me to, but they don’t know, do they? Not like we know.”

And worse yet? She thought she loved him. Not still. But all over again. Him as Kadir. She as Minako. It somehow made the memories of his betrayal fresh and new. _I can’t. I can’t make the same mistakes Venus did. I can’t fail._

“Minako,” Kunzite said, and she realized it was the first time he’d called her that. Minako. It rolled off his tongue in a strange, unsettling way. “What do you want me to say?”

That was the million dollar question, wasn’t it? It was comfortably warm in his apartment, but she wrapped her hands around her elbows and shivered anyway. What did she want him to say?

“Tell me,” she said, before she could stop herself, the words bubbling up her throat like she’d had too much champagne to drink, “that you were tricked. That you had no idea what Beryl was going to do. That you never wanted to betray the Moon Kingdom. That everything you did was against your will. You told Beryl no and she took anyway.”

He was so quiet and so still for a while she wondered if he hadn’t fallen asleep. She peered at him in the darkness, and then he shifted. His fingers, whisper light, skimmed over her wrist and made her jump, memories new and old rattling so heavy inside her she thought her ribs might end up bruised.

“I won’t insult you by telling you a lie you’d never believe,” he said. “I didn’t know about Metalia, not until it was too late, but I joined Beryl willingly. Beryl offered a way to rival the strength of the Moon Kingdom, to finally create a playing field were all parties stood on equal footing. I did what I thought was best at the time—for my prince, for my people, for my kingdom.”

“The Moon Kingdom would have never hurt the Earth!” she thundered, physically offended by the idea.

The slash of moonlight revealed that he was scowling at her, the first instance of emotion he had since she had woken up from the nightmare. The leader of Endymion’s Shitennou had always been slow to anger. It had simmered like water set to the broil, until it spilled over. She’d always found that fascinating about him. Those still waters running so deep.

“It’s easy to say that when you have all the power,” he said lowly. “Long-lived and blessed by the gods, with powers far beyond the scope of mortals. You were terrifying. Suppose one day, you thought you needed to do something for our own good? If you had invaded, we would have been utterly crushed. Utterly decimated. Queen Serenity watching from her throne of silver and ivory. We were children to her, unworthy of making decisions for ourselves. Prince Endymion, the heir to the Earth, our greatest and strongest, was deemed unworthy of even looking upon her daughter. I lost myself to the darkness, Minako, it devoured my will and consumed me. It made me do things I would never have done of my own violation. But I can’t claim to have always been unwilling. I took what powered was offered, without giving the consequences a thought.”

Her mouth compressed into a thin, unhappy line. What if he had a point? Venus had been entrenched in Lunar politics, a focal point of them. She had never given the Earth a thought until she had meet him. They had, hadn’t they, always thought of Earth rather childlike? Primitive. Even after she had met Kunzite, she had thought him a rarity. She hadn’t even though him fully Terran. _He must have Lunar blood, she had thought, because he’s so much stronger than a Terran._

She felt sick, and Minako did what she normally did when presented with an unpleasant idea. She fought it.

“It doesn’t change what you did!” she thundered, spinning. Her hands were fisted, and she barely checked the urge to wail at him. She wasn’t a child. “How am I supposed to forget? How am I supposed to forgive?”

The phantom pain of his sword, nearly hilt deep in her chest. The personal, intimate betrayal of it—how close and tender he had held her, stroking her hair, mocking the blood that poured onto his pristine uniform whites. The deeper pain from Venus— _I let him, I let him do this to me._ She was so glad she had managed to find some hidden well of strength within her to plunge her own sword into his side. Even now, so glad she had killed him a lifetime ago.

“You don’t owe anyone forgiveness, Minako,” he said quietly. A muscle moved in his jaw in the silvery glow of the moonlight. “Not to anyone—least of all, to me.”

Why couldn’t he just demand forgiveness? It would be so much easier to deny him it.

“I wish I hadn’t loved you so much,” she said, absolutely wretched. The last time she had felt this awful had been an eon ago, in this same man’s presence. “Then it wouldn’t be so hard to forgive you.”

“Minako.” He shifted again and she knew he was going to reach for her, pull her into his arms. She thought she was going to be sick, a lead ball of grief and desperation and longing twisting in her stomach.

“Don’t touch me.”

His arms dropped heavily to his side.

She had to get out. She couldn’t breathe in this room, with him, with the past and the present and the future clogging the air between them.

“Don’t follow me.”

“I’d follow you to the ends of the earth,” he told her, “unless you told me not to.”

True to his word, he didn’t follow her. Not as she leapt to her feet, not as she raced out the door and down the stairs, into the cold winter air. Minako wondered if she wished he had.

 

 

 

 

She drank. Heavily. And holed up in her crummy apartment to lick her wounds. Rei texted her, argument forgotten. Makoto texted her, trying to lure her out with pancake batter. Ami texted her, suggesting that they go out dancing again. Usagi constantly texted her, each message growing steadily more panicked.

Minako answered none of them. Not even when Artemis called and threatened to come home early.

“I’m a mess,” she announced to the empty apartment and since there was no one to argue the truth she drank the last of her tequila and passed out in a heap on her couch.

And found Rei scowling down at her. “Oh. Look. You’re not dead.”

_Reaching for Mars, screaming for Kunzite to stop even knowing he wouldn’t—she should have been able to protect Mars. She should have been able to stop—_

The hangover didn’t hurt nearly as much as her heart, Minako found. “What do you want?”

“ _Minako_!” And there was Usagi, warm arms wrapping around her, pulling her into a tight embrace. “You didn’t answer anyone’s text messages. We thought—we thought sometime had happened!”

Something had happened. She’d broken her heart all over again.

Ami sat on the arm of her cheap couch, checking vitals. She heard Makoto clattering around in the kitchen, making something yeasty to absorb all the alcohol in Minako’s stomach. Rei stood with her hands on her hips, scowling down at her. And it all rounded out with Usagi and her vise grip, refusing to let go.

_Gang’s all here._

“Do you have any idea how worried we all were?” Rei demanded in her classic _avoid how upset I am about something by getting mad about something else._ “The least you could do was answer Usagi!”

Minako didn’t even have the energy to mumble an apology, because the least she could have done was answer Usagi. Her princess, her charge—the one Venus had failed the most. Makoto stomped in from the kitchen, thrusting a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at her.

“Eat,” she ordered.

Just thinking about food made her want to heave. She shook her head, purposely holding the plate away from her.

“Kadir especially,” Usagi went on. “Of course, he didn’t say anything but Nephrite said his apartment is in shambles and he hasn’t been eating or working—Kadir is always working!”

“I don’t care what he’s doing!” she bellowed.

Ami’s face went pale. “But that night at the club, you were—we thought you would—”

“You’re wrong,” Minako hissed at her, refusing to feel guilty when a look of hurt crossed her friend’s face.

“You’re being a stubborn brat!” Rei snarled into her face. “You don’t want to forgive him? Fine. Don’t forgive him. But this game has to end. We are not going to be picking up the pieces anymore.”

Minako snarled, more the ready to feel the spurt of anger. It was better than the grief, the sadness. She came barreling out of Usagi’s arms, swinging her fists. “It’s so easy for you!” she snapped, gnashing her teeth and pinning each of them with a glare. “To forgive and forget. Well, not for me!”

“It’s not easy! Don’t you dare say that!” Makoto said, voice booming like a crack of thunder. “We’ve all had to find a way to get over what they did. We forgave, but you’re doing neither. It’s cruel, and it’s unfair, Minako, and not like you. Why is it so hard?”

“Because I remember! Because Venus was—because it should have never happened. I was stronger than that!” she screamed. “You know why it’s easy for you? Because you didn’t strangle Nephrite with your whip, I did! Because you didn’t behead Zoisite, I did! Mars’s fire might have burned Jadeite to a tinder but I lured him into her trap. And it was me—only me—who couldn’t get to Mars in time when Kunzite snapped her neck. Kunzite, he—he—oh Goddess.”

Rei’s hand stole up to her neck, eyes wide with horror. She didn’t remember. Minako felt her stomach roll and she leaned to her side in case she vomited. All of her Senshi looked pale, looked shaken, and she was the one who had done it.

_Some leader._

“Minako,” Usagi said, and there were no tears in her princess and future queen’s voice. She was calm in the face of their grief, her fingers moving comfortingly through Minako’s golden hair. Like a mother would. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Because you’re my best friends! Why would I tell you that? If you didn’t remember how could I remind you? If you were happy, how could I tell you why I wasn’t?”

“Because we’re your best friends!” Rei shouted. “You don’t keep secrets from us!”

“I’m your leader! I’m supposed to protect you! I should have protected you!”

“You’re Venus second and Minako first,” Ami said very quietly. “And we protect each other.”

A dam broke inside of Minako and into belly-deep sobs escaped her. She rolled onto her stomach, sobbing into her couch’s cushions. They were right. They were right. She had tried to protect them and instead had only hurt them.

“I’m sorry!” she sobbed. “I’m sorry!” She hadn’t told them because they found a way to be happy with the Shitennou and she wanted that for them, but she hadn’t wanted to them to be happy either. What was wrong with her?

Her girls circled around her, rubbing her back and cooing at her until she managed to lower her sobs into watery hiccups.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Minako whispered over and over again.

“Shh. Shh. There’s nothing to be sorry about, Minako,” Usagi whispered gently at her ear. Then, to the rest of the girls, “Help me get her into a bath.”

They managed to all squeeze into her pathetically tiny bathroom. Minako tried apologizing again, but they wouldn’t hear of it and she lapped into silence, letting them bath her like a child. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had taken care of her like this. Maybe never.

No one said anything about the bite marks and hickeys still healing on her skin. Minako hadn’t bathed since she had left Kunzite’s apartment, but she didn’t have the energy to feel gross about it.

They bundled her up in thick flannel pajamas and then took turns watching over her in her fitful sleep until the next morning arrived and Minako, bleary-eyed but sober and aware, told them quietly that she would be okay. They began to disperse.

“Don’t hate them,” Minako said. “It’s not their fault. They’re not the same people. I just—”

“Minako,” Makoto halted her flow of words with a forefinger to Minako’s nose, “stop worrying about everyone else. We’ll manage. You worry about you.”

And then only Usagi was left.

In that moment, it was so easy to see the girl who would queen. There was a serenity to her, a steady calmness that made her indomitable in her strength. She sat beside Minako’s window, watching her with such love and affection Minako felt the tears well up again.

“Whatever you decide we’ll stand by you,” Usagi said quietly. “Because we love you, and your happiness is what matters to us. If you want them all sent away, they’ll all leave.”

She threw out a hand in protest. “No, I—”

Usagi caught it and made a shushing sound. “It’s about what you want right now, Minako. Not anyone else.” She leaned over, rubbing her nose against Minako’s. “But not making a decision is only going to hurt you more. One way or the other, Minako, it’s time to make your choice.”

Usagi left, with a promise not to call Artemis no matter what, and though morning was in full gear outside Minako’s window she fell straight back to sleep.

 

 

 

 

_And dreamed of Venus’s last moments._

_She and Kunzite clash on that battlefield, stained with the blood of those they had loved. Minako knows how this will play out, has seen how this will end a hundred times._

_Venus, weakened by grief and the brutal slaying of Mars, flatters and gives Kunzite his opening. He lashes his arm around her waist, dragging her struggling body against his. Each inch closer drives his blade deeper into his chest. In a mockery of a lover’s embrace, he murmurs endearments into her hair as Venus’s blood drips onto his uniform._

_Standing apart from the dream, outside it, Minako heard Metalia’s laugh and knew how cruel that dark queen could be. She released Kunzite from his thrall as Venus’s death rattle escaped her parted, bloodied lips._

_“Venus?” For once, the leader of the Shitennou’s remote eyes go wide with pure horror. “Oh—oh God, what? Venus.” The moment he realizes what has happened, what he has done, he drops to his knees, cradling her close._

_It’s the opportunity Venus needs. The dagger in her skirt is mostly for cutting the skins of apples, but she drives it between his ribs and deeper still, shattering bone until she can piece his lung. A wet gurgle of pain escapes Kunzite, but he doesn’t let her go until his strength deserts him and they both hit the ground with bodily thuds. Venus pushs away from him with the last of her strength, refusing to die in his traitorous arms._

_“Venus—Venus,” Kunzite says over the blood pooling his mouth. He reaches for her, but hadn’t the strength for breach across the distance. “Forgive me.”_

_She laughs at him, bitter and hard. “Never.”_

_And then—Venus stood._

_The scene changed, morphing beneath Minako’s feet, until they stood in a garden in full bloom. It touched an old memory at the back of her head. Her favorite garden in Magellan Castle, a place that would never be truly home to her ever again. The pang of loss that resonated in her heart was not entirely Minako’s own._

_“Are you the one sending me the dreams?” Minako demanded. “Reminding me not to forgive him?”_

_Venus looked insulted. “Of course not,” she snapped. “You’re doing that yourself.”_

_“What—?”_

_“You’re using what Kunzite did to me as a reason for not allowing that boy to get close to you,” Venus said, sending her a look that said she was clearly bored with having to explain things to this little Earthling._

_She remembered what Kunzite had said, about how those from the Silver Millennium had looked down on Earth as primitive, uncivilized, childish. He had had a point._

_“Why?” Minako demanded. “Why would I do that? I wanted to forgive him!”_

_Venus sighed, looking down at her nails. “What does he have to do with anything?” she asked. “You’re not mad at him, are you?”_

_Minako’s eyes went wide._

_“I don’t care if you forgive that boy, for what he did in a past life,” Venus sneered. “All that matters to me is that I killed Kunzite, and he died with no forgiveness for his sins. What happens to that soul afterward matters naught to me.”_

_Minako’s fingers balled into fists. She had never seen Venus like this before, haughty and arrogant, but then again—she had always been inside Venus’s mind, reliving those memories as if they were her own._

_“You’re not truly this simple-minded, Minako,” Venus said. “You don’t truly believe all this time you were trying to forgive Kunzite, were you?”_

_No. She hadn’t._

Minako’s eyes fluttered open as the next morning dawn spilled into her room, tears rolling down her cheeks as she accepted the truth.

 

 

 

 

Breaking and entering was, strictly, not legal but for the good of one’s heart and health Minako figured some crimes could be overlooked.

Her lockpicking skills weren’t anything to write home about, but who needed to be good at lockpicking when one could simply break the doorknob?

“I’m going to pay for it,” she said to no one in particular and stepped inside Kadir’s apartment.

Whoa. Usagi hadn’t been kidding. The one pristine apartment was a mess. Overturned chairs, shattered dishes, shredded throw pillows, bits and scraps of wood and fabric everywhere. Kadir had gone to town on his apartment and left a wreckage not even Minako could do on her best days.

It made her want to put her arms around him, hold him so close he was absorbed into her skin, but Kadir wasn’t in the apartment. Mamoru, Nathan, Zeke and Junichi had apparently dragged him out to force-feed him something and she doubted they were much in the mood to tell her where they’d gone. She wouldn’t be surprised if they had formed a He-Man Minako Aino Hating Shitennou Club—though she hoped that Mamoru wouldn’t be a card-carrying member.

She sighed and then rolled up her sleeves. She hated cleaning so she hoped Kadir appreciated this obvious labor of love.

The main area of the studio loft took her a good two hours to tidy up, but when she was done it was military clean. Even Kadir would be impressed.

She moved into the bedroom, even more of a mess. Sheets knotted and tossed to the edge of the bed, clothes thrown haphazardly in heaps. She picked them up and then tossed them into the laundry since it was impossible to tell what was clean or not. The bathroom, at least, was still mostly in order.

In his closet she found—his cape?

Jolting, she reached out and touched the thick, woolen fabric. Magic hummed low beneath her fingertips, imbued with the power that had kept it intact over the years. Minako knew each Shitennou had a uniform, not unlike the Senshi had their fukus, but she always thought they just willed it into existence like they did. Yeah, she’d heard all about the days when Mamoru had wandered up and down Tokyo in a tuxedo but—honestly? Mamoru was a dork like that and she had just figured he’d sighed deeply and gone my aesthetic is twenty-four hour formal wear.

She imagined Kadir ducking into a bathroom stall to change when a monster attacked and burst out laughing. _He’s like my very own superman._

Fingering the collar, she made a split second decision and tugged it into her arms.

Kadir came home less than hour later. Minako could hear him moved around his loft, scuffling across the floor. What would he make of his newly cleaned loft? Could he sense her? She could sense him, his power rubbing gently over her skin, like a caress.

“Kadir,” she said quietly, stepping out of his bedroom.

Yes, he had known she was there, because he had been staring transfixed at the doorway before she had even stepped out. His eyes were far from icy now, alive and electric, nearly white hot in their intensity. An arrow of pleasure raced up Minako’s spine as he processed that she was here and then another rush as he saw she was wrapped up in his Shitennou cloak.

“Minako,” he breathed, hands lifting like he wanted to reach out and touch her.

“Hi,” she said quietly, clutching his cloak to her chin.

Kadir took a step closer, than another, each one cautious like he was afraid she’d bolt. His hand lifted again and, when she didn’t make a sound of protest, laid lightly on her cheek, cupping.

“I think I’ve made a decision,” she said.

“Have you?”

She wet her lips. “It wasn’t—I wasn’t struggling to try to forgive you, Kadir. I’d done that already, a long time ago. We all got second chances, and you were used—you wanted to protect the people you loved, you wanted to protect Endymion, and Beryl and Metalia used that against you. Galaxia pulled out my soul and I tried to kill Usagi. I have to live with that, just like you have you have to live with what you did to me.”

His fingers tightened over her cheek.

“I couldn’t—I couldn’t forgive myself. Venus. For not protecting Mars and Serenity.” She closed her eyes, nuzzling his palm. “I was so mad at Venus for opening her heart and letting herself get hurt like that. I carried it around, and used it as a reason to never let anyone in again. In London someone told me _your love will be doomed for all eternity_ —and I told myself it wasn’t a curse, it was a blessing. Proof that I shouldn’t ever let anyone get close to me again, that I needed to have my duty and only my duty. Nothing else.”

“Minako—”

She reached out and laid a hand over his heart. “You’re not Kunzite. Not all the way. Just like I’m not Venus. They’re inside us, part of us, but we’re ourselves, too.” Tentatively, she stepped closer to him. Her forehead touched the solid wall of his chest, aware that his arm did not come up and wrapped around her. “I don’t want to forget the past. It’s what made us who we are now, but I don’t want it to deny us our future either.”

She breathed in the scent of him, fingers curling lightly over his chest so she could feel the thump-thump beating of his heart. So steady, this man. She needed that sort of steadiness in her life, an anchor to solid ground.

“I don’t want to start over,” she admitted, eye lashes fluttering as she peeked up at him. “But I want to move forward. Can we? Kadir, can we just—”

“I still haven’t forgive Kunzite for all he did. It’s—it’s strange, to have his thoughts in my head, to know them like they’re my own, but still not agree with him. I hated him, too. For a long, long time.” His arms closed around her tightly, lifting her off her feet. He buried her face in her hair, breathing deep.

“I think—we all remember the Moon Kingdom as this utopia and maybe it was, but there might have been unhappiness there too. I think people suffered, just quietly.” Venus had never paid attention because she hadn’t cared, but Kadir’s words stroke a cord with Minako. Yes, what had happened to the Moon Kingdom was unjust and cruel, but she didn’t think it was a mess entirely not of their own making.

“Kunzite loved Venus, I think, but only within limitations. Maybe never fully.”

She nodded. “Venus never gave Kunzite her heart, not really. She loved him, but she had limitations, too. She thought so little of the earth and its people, even knowing that you loved it.” She touched his cheek. “They’re not us, though. We’re different, and we can be different from them.”

“I would have waited for you, forever, and not just because of Kunzite’s memories of Venus,” he said, so solemnly her heart turned over. 

“Well, technically, you kind of did,” Minako pointed out, hooking her arms around his neck to steady herself. Her feet dangled inches from the floor but she felt no fear. “But I hate waiting. I’m impatient.”

He laughed against her shoulder, nuzzling her through the fabric of his cape until it parted. He pushed open the cape at her waist, slipping a hand inside and groaning when he found her bare flesh.

“I’ve missed you,” she said, speaking into his shoulder. “All of you. Kadir. Kunzite. All the pieces that make you up. I’ve missed them.”

He pressed his opened mouth against hers, swallowing her words as he walked them to his couch and sunk down. His fingers stroked over her naked flesh, his mouth kissed against her neck, but didn’t deepen his touch into something sexual.

“You haven’t been sleeping,” she accused him, rubbing the purple bags under his eyes. “Go to sleep.”

“Will you be here when I wake up?” he demanded.

Minako laughed. “Definitely. In fact, you’re going to be desperate to get rid of me in a few days once you start finding my clothes all over your floor.”

“Never,” he said, and his head dropped heavily to her breast.

Within moments, he was asleep, arms locked tightly around her. He was a little heavy, but she loved the feel of him against her, on top of her.

She watched him sleep, stroking his hair, before she began to drift off herself. For once, there were no dreams and Venus was quiet in her head.

 

 

 

 

“I should write a book. How Minako Got Her Groove Back. It’ll be a best seller,” Minako drawled, balancing a glass of wine with two fingers.

The five of them clustered around the little table at the Hikawa Shrine, reminiscence of their teenage years, discussing battle plans and monster attacks. They hadn’t drifted apart, but with no immediate danger on the horizon, these meetings had stopped seeming so important.

They’d grown up. Ami in med school, Makoto opening her bakery, Usagi going to university and planning her marriage to Mamoru, Rei taking more and more responsibilities at the shrine while juggling her own online classes, and of course Minako running this way and that trying to figure herself out.

It didn’t matter, Minako decided. Wherever they’d go, whatever happened, they’d end up back together when it counted. And their love for each other would transcend time.

 _Crystal Tokyo awaits one way or the other_ , she decided, and tipping her glass at the ceiling in a salute.

She sat up, smiling. “So,” she said.

Rei rolled her eyes. “Please, not another blow-by-blow about your sex life.”

Minako cackled. She was a sharer like that, what could she say? “C’mon, it’s not nearly as raunchy as Makoto’s. Kadir and I stick to fuzzy handcuffs. Makoto’s 50 Shades-ing it up.”

Makoto’s face went a beat red. Of course, none of them really knew just what exactly went on behind closed door but Minako was the goddess of love and beauty. She could put two and two together and get four. A sexy four.

“But,” she said before Makoto decided to defend Nathan’s honor and start wailing on Minako, “what I was going to say is that I think Kadir and I are going to New York for a while.”

Silence. They were all looking at her as she stretched her arms.

“Minako,” Usagi began.

“Oh, don’t look sad. It’s not like its forever, but it’s complicated for us and I think being somewhere where we can just be Minako and Kadir would be nice. Besides, Kadir still works for that brokerage firm in New York and it’s getting harder and harder for him to do things remotely. We both just want a few years to ourselves.” Figuring things out, they had decided.

_“I’ll take you to Bourdon Street on Mardi Gras,” he had said._

_Minako had hooted in joy. She’d done some research and everything about it made it sound like a pleasure buffet. “Can I get beads?” she demanded._

_Kadir’s playfully pinched her side until she gave a yelp. “Only if I’m the only one you give the lap dances, too.”_

_“Definitely.” She crawled into his lap, biting down on his lip. “You are the only one who gets to have a lap dance from the Goddess of Love and Beauty. How does that make you feel?”_

_He spent the next several hours showing her with his mouth._

“It might be good for you,” Ami said at last. She could see it in each of her girls’ eyes. They didn’t want her to go, but they wouldn’t stop her. They loved her and knew her enough to know sometimes Minako needed to do things on her own.

“I’m going to look for a job in New York City, too,” she said. “I’m not above using Kadir’s connections there to get a foot in the fashion door, but if I managed to get something it’ll be because I’m just that good.”

“You’ll come back, won’t you?” Sweet Usagi, who wanted everyone to be happy and everyone to be close so she could take care of them, and love them.

“Of course. I’ll visit when I can, too.” She bounded up and over, swinging her arms around Usagi’s neck and dragging her into a hug. “And you whistle and I’ll come running. Senshi’s honor!”

Usagi giggled and shoved at Minako’s bear hug. They lost their balance and collapsed onto the floor in a tangle of limbs and blonde hair.

“First though,” Minako said, “we’re going to take a vacay.” This was the moment she had been waiting for and she pushed herself to her knees, not unlike portrait of Venus coming out of the seafoam.

“Oh? Did I not mention it?” Her smiled curled smugly over her lips. “Kadir owns private property on the Spanish Rivera. I’m going to give Sex on the Beach a try—not just the drink, mind.”

The four descended on her in a dogpile and Minako welcomed them with open arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. i have very little to say about this fic  
> 2\. the culprits behind it will be convicted to the full extent of the law  
> 3\. it wasn't even supposed to be 1/3 of the length it ended up being  
> 4\. how  
> 5\. fortius quo fidelius = 'strength through loyalty'  
> 6\. it seemed appropriate for kunzite/kadir  
> 7\. it's also the tattoo on the arm of a.j. burnett  
> 8\. which has nothing to do with anything except that i am a yankee's fan  
> 9\. personally, i do not think kunzite is a yankee's fan and he's probably annoyed that guy copied him  
> 10\. if you've read this thing in its entirety i want you to go have a bubble bath and a glass of wine, listen to a book  
> 11\. not like a sad book a happy book with better sex scenes than the ones i wrote here  
> 12\. you've earned it

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. so  
> 2\. once upon a time [jordan](nikitaduncan.tumblr.com/) were discussing minako, kunzite, and their sex life  
> 3\. "you should write me porn," says jordan  
> 4\. "okay," says megan  
> 5\. 73 pages later  
> 6\. [annie](shewhodestroysthelight.tumblr.com) did not help  
> 7\. fic title, and chapter titles, all come from hozier's _take me to church_


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